Counting On The Dark
In the dark of the night, I count.
Lately, I’ve been counting countries. In alphabetical order. By continent. Antigua, Argentina, Austria, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Angola, Afghanistan — you get the idea. For your information there are 17 countries that begin with “M.” On a bad night, I get all the way to Zaire and Zimbabwe.
Did I mention I do this in bed? With my eyes closed? Breathing rhythmically? Of course I’m hoping to to trick — or at least bore — myself to sleep.
There’s an old expression: “Your mind is like a bad neighborhood. Don’t go there too often and don’t go alone.” I didn’t make that up, but it explains why I count. It’s too risky to let my mind drift.
Of course counting to fall asleep is as old as the hills, or at least as old as the days when sheep herders began counting sheep. According to Mental Floss, shepherds in medieval Britain used communal grazing grounds, thus the nightly roundup. Each shepherd needed to keep track of how many animals he had. Some speculate the expression “counting sheep” has even older origins.
I suspect that humans have been tossing and turning since they acquired the ability for abstract thought.
Anyway, there are many approaches to sleep counting. One hack recommends counting backwards by one, starting at 10,000. Another suggests counting backwards from 300 by threes. I am not a math person and this would be far more stressful than soothing.
I’m prefer playing with letters. Letters can open you up to all sorts of mind-numbing categories. For instance, I used to see if I could name a rock band for each letter of the alphabet, but that was too easy (except for “X’) so I switched it up to three rock bands per letter. My list will date me, but this challenge took me from America, Aerosmith and the Animals all the way to the Zombies, Warren Zevon and ZZ Top. But this got too easy as well.
Now, to reveal the depths of my nerdiness, I’ll confess that another great night time count is naming all the characters in Jane Eyre, alphabetically. (As a prerequisite for playing, you need to have read the novel more times than you can actually count. For the record, my rules allow Mr. Rochester’s housekeeper, Alice Fairfax, can be counted as both an “A” and an “F.”)
Real life people names — as opposed to fictional characters — can be less challenging but trickier. Say I choose a name that begins with “A,” like “Amy,” and count how many Amys I know, before moving on to “Barbara.” Is it cheating to include well-known Amys, i.e. Amy Schumer or Amy Poehler, who I don’t actually know, versus Amys like my sister Amy?
Of course you can get around this by creating subcategories, such as only celebrities or only authors. Don’t worry. You can also break it down by gender, male, female and other. The possibilities are endless. And don’t worry — it’s only 3 am by now.
Does it work? I’m not sure. It could be that my mind just gets distracted and tangled up in all this counting and sorting and that’s why I eventually fall asleep. Or it could be that I’m keeping myself up for hours with all these truly useless mental gymnastics, and would go to sleep easier if I just let myself drift. But drift leads to my anxieties. And anxiety leads to wakefulness.
If you’ve gotten this far (can’t sleep?), please don’t feel compelled to lecture me about good sleep hygiene. I already limit my caffeine. I rarely watch TV. I have a bedtime routine. The room is dark. I. Just. Can’t. Sleep.
Recently, I discovered my adult son is also a night counter. A huge hockey fan, he will count players (retired and active) in all sorts of incarnations. Because the game is filled with international players, he gets to play with cool names like Zuccarello and Voracek. Whatever works.
In this season of ghosts and ghouls, I don’t need any extra spookiness. In the dark of the night, I’ve got more than I can handle; in fact, more than I can count on two hands.