Jenny Allen - Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas

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For Halley and Julie

Lord?

Please dont let me die in a funny way.

Like being beaten to death with a shoe. Especially not my own shoe. And, if it absolutely has to be my own shoe, Id rather not be wearing it at the time.

Paul Simms, A Prayer, The New Yorker

Im up. Are you up? Im not up up, not doing-things up, because Im supposed to be sleeping. Im trying to go back to sleep. But Im awake. Awake awake awake.

Thats what Buddha said. Buddha said, I am awake. Buddha got that idea, that whole concept, from a middle-aged woman, Im sure.

Not that this sleepless business ends at any time. I think you have to die first.

If you added up all the hours Ive been awake, it would come to years by now. Fifty may be the new forty, but it feels like the new eighty.

Thank you, thats a very good idea, but I already took a sleeping pill. I fell asleep right awayits bliss, that drugged drifting offbut now Im awake again. That always happens! I fall asleep, boom, and then, four or five hours later, I wake uplike its my turn on watch, like Ive had three cups of coffee. Like Ive just had a full nights sleep. But if I act as if Ive had a full nights sleep, if I get up and do things, I will be a goner after two oclock in the afternoon. I will confuse the TV remote with the cordless phone and try to answer it, I will not notice any of my typosI will type pubic school this and pubic school that in e-mails to people whose public schools I am looking at for my daughter. I will scramble words as if I have had a small stroke. I will say, Id like the Drussian ressing, and then I will have to make one of those dumb Alzheimers jokes.

I could take another sleeping pill, but I worry about that. I worry about becoming too used to sleeping pills. Sleeping pills always make me think of Judy Garland. Poor Judy.

Its funny about the name Judy, isnt it? No one names anyone Judy anymoredo you ever meet five-year-old Judys?but half the women I know are named Judy. You would probably be safe when meeting any woman over fifty just to say, Nice to meet you, Judy. Most of the time you would be right.

I am going to lie here and fall asleep counting all the Judys I know.

Thirteen Judys. Including my ex-husbands ex-wife. Whos very nice, by the way.

Im still awake.

Some people who knew my ex-husband before I knew him used to call me Judy. Hi, Judy, how are you? theyd say, and I never corrected them. Who could blame them when they knew so many Judys? Although I did sort of hope that later they realized theyd called me the wrong name and made note of my graciousness in not saying anything. I cant believe I called her Judyand her husbands ex-wife is named Judy. She could have been really unpleasant about that, but she didnt say anything at all. What a fine and self-restrained person she is. Im going to try and be more like her.

Are all my Judy friends up, like me? Judy in Brooklyn Heights, are you up? Judy on Amsterdam Avenue, Judy in Carroll Gardens, Judy in Morningside Heights, Judy on Riverside Drive? Im here in my bed imagining I can see all of you outside my windowI probably could see a few of you if you waved at me; one of my bedroom windows looks out on a nice-sized chunk of the city. But I am imagining that I am seeing all of you, like the teacher on Romper Room when I was little. She used to hold a big magnifying glass the size of a tennis racquet in front of her face so that it was between her and you, and she would say, I see Leslie, and Barbara, and Scott, and Bruce, and Judy. And I see Karen, and Peter, and Derek She must have called my name, because I knew she saw me.

That is how I feel about my friends when I lie awake at night. I see them. I see all the Judys, and I see Jackie and Polly and Ellie, Naomi and Cindy and Cathy and the Deborahs (three!). I see them lying there in their nighties, their faces shiny with moisturizer. Some of us lie alone, some of us lie next to another person who is, enragingly, sleeping like a log. How can these people next to us sleep so profoundly? They snore, they shake their restless-leg-syndrome legs all over their side of the bed, they mutter protests in their dreamsI didnt say Elmira! and Its not yours! Theyre making a regular racket, and yet they sleep on.

Sleepless friends, I am thinking about you. Judy on Riverside Drive, are you worrying about your rewrites? Bina, are you thinking about your new twin grandchildren? Are you worried about your daughter getting worn-out taking care of them? Mimi, are you up thinking of whom you havent had lunch with lately? Youre 86 years old. Thats 237 in wakeful-woman years. Congratulations for hanging in there.

Sometimes, when I first go to sleep for the night, I fall asleep to the television. And this is a strange thing: No matter what I have fallen asleep watching, when I wake up, whats on is Girls Gone Wild . I never turn the channel to Girls Gone Wild , let alone turn up the volume, but the volume is earsplitting. How have I slept for even one minute with the volume so high? Am I going deaf? My goodness, those girls must sleep well, when they finally do sleep. I have to change the channel right away when I wake up to Girls Gone Wild becausewell, of course because I dont want to watch it, but also because I always think about the girls mothers, and that upsets me. I worry about their mothers, up in the middle of the night, waking to Girls Gone Wild on the television set. That looks just like Melanieoh, my God.

Look: Law & Order is on. Ive seen this episode. Do they run the same ones over and over, or is it just that I have seen every single episode that exists? What a scary thought. Fortunately I never remember what happens after the opening scene when they find the body, so I can watch them all over again.

That was a good one.

Im still awake.

When did I last sleep well? That sleep when you touched your head to the pillow and slept so soundly you woke up wondering how it could be morning when you hadnt even fallen asleep yet? My children sleep like this sometimes, especially the younger one. Did I go to sleep yet? she asks on occasion. I didnt appreciate it when I was young, naturally. Did you sleep well? people would ask me in the morning, and I would think, Of course I slept well. Isnt sleeping poorly a contradiction in terms?

Friends, are you all still up? It seems inefficient somehow for us all to be awake separately. Wouldnt it be great if we could pool all our separate little tributaries of wakeful energy into one mighty Mississippi, and then harness itlike a WPA project, like the Hoover Dam? We could power something. We could get the other awake women in other cities and light up the entire Eastern Seaboard. And have huge middle-of-the-night parties for all the women who are awake.

I should read. No, reading is too hard for the dead of night. It has too many words in it. Including words I might not know. If I read a word I dont know, I will feel compelled to scrawl it on whatever piece of paper is on my bedside table and then hope Ill be able to read my writing tomorrow. If I am too lazy to write down the word, I will have to decide whether to dog-ear the pagebad reader citizenship!and I dont want the burden of that choice now, in the middle of the night.