Insomnia (from the archive)

This morning at 3am there was a knock on the front door. It was the man from The Insomnia Association, recruiting new members.

“We’re changing our approach,” he explained, wearily.  “Up until now everyone’s thought of insomnia as a sort of ailment.  But we’ve had the marketing people in and we’re repositioning it as a lifestyle choice.”

He pressed a brochure into my hands.  It had a picture of a sleepwalker going into a disco on the cover. The slogan said ‘Insomnia: Live the Dream!’

“Our members have eight hours a day more leisure time that anyone else,” he continued.  “That’s 2,920 hours of free time a year.  Just think what you could achieve while everyone else wastes their lives snoring.  You could become a competent guitarist, get a degree in organic chemistry or even learn how to fly a helicopter.  And because you don’t sleep, you’ll feel like you’ve lived a lot longer than other people, even if you die at 53!”

I said I’d sleep on it and closed the door.

(Then secretly I went back into the study to continue reading my Chemistry book).