Sleep is Overrated, at least, Sleep Technology is.

I've long held issue with the term "sleep like a baby." I haven't had my own yet, but I've been around enough in my time to bust this particular myth.

Babies don't sleep like babies.

Babies are fickle creatures. They sleep on a schedule that only works as a case to prove entropy. Go on a four hour drive and your child will cry, mumble, talk, whine, scream and poop for three hours and fifty nine minutes. The minute, the second, you pull into your driveway they're asleep. And not a deep sleep. They're not catching serious "z's." No. If you try to pick them up and move them, it's over. They're back to crying, mumbling, talking, whining, screaming and pooping. Only now they're tired and hungry too.

And this is just the experience I have had imparted in my memory. (That is to say, my mother tells me this was how I was.) My sister rarely slept through the night, and absolutely detested her childhood room. She didn't like the distance between her and the rest of the family. Bedtime was a silly joke played by my hopeful parents (on themselves.)

This didn't stop her from sleeping. Not at all. The moment I sat down on the couch, in would wander a grumpy toddler, empty bottle in hand and pouty eyes looking straight ahead. Without any provocation or even an "is it cool if I..." lead in sentence, up she would climb and plop right down on my chest. Asleep before her drool filled cheeks touched my shirt. This style of napping kept up for a year or so (or about 40 ruined t-shirts later.)

I bring this all up because my sleep schedule has been unnatural bordering on unholy of late. Despite a one or two o'clock bedtime, I consistently find myself not being able to sleep until four and five am. (Sometime after Family Guy is over, but before the NUMB3RS reruns are done.) You know, that time when all the late night commercials hit the air.

This week's commercial of choice has been "the Sleep Number" bed. The revolutionary technology that we've been hearing about for the past decade. I'm not sure how this concept works. They use words like "new" and "modern" but the first Sleep Number mattress commercial I saw came on right after a "Clap-On" ad back in the nineties.

The problem with this whole system for me is that I've rarely met someone with whom bed comfort is the issue. Beds are comfortable, by nature. We are a race of beings who at one point slept on rocks (in some cases still do), we sleep under the stars and on shaking boats, comfort isn't the problem (often.) Now you find a bed that will read to me, sooth my worries and pay my taxes, and you might just have yourself a new customer.

We could call it the "Therapists Couch...bed!" Throw in some of that astronaut foam, and charge triple. After all, memory foam is the brand new, revolutionary sleep technology of the space age.

You know, the one that started in the fifties.