Sleep

I love sleep. I spent much of my spring break sleeping. I have been known to sleep for fifteen hours straight and I must admit that sleeping like that is better than "better than sex" cake.

I lose quite a bit of sleep during the semester, especially during midterms and finals, but I only have five weeks left until I can spend almost an entire week sleeping.

I recently learned from Paul Martin's 2002 book, Counting Sheep: The Science and Pleasures of Sleep and Dreams that the average human being spends about one third of his or her life sleeping. He actually focuses his first chapter, "A Third of Life," on an 1801 quote by Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin.

In 2002, Martin wrote that one third of a human life equals about 25 years! 25 years of sleep sounds absolutely phantasmagorical! Too bad it can't all happen at once!

I wonder if Washington Irving would agree with me? He wrote Rip Van Winkle just 18 years after Erasmus Darwin made the original claim that humans sleep for about a third of their lives.