Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 8, 1993 TAG: 9302060190
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SLEEP DANGEROUS? WHO WOULD EVER HAVE DREAMED IT?
This is a free country, and as a good American I will support to my death the right of scientists to make studies.This is despite the fact that the way these studies are going now indicate that my journey to the Other Side might not be too far distant.
The results of these inquiries never give old yours truly here anything to cheer about as far as longevity is concerned.
Last week, for example, these people found that dreams can kill you.
The key here is what they call "nervous sleep," which is the only kind of sleep I get.
Those scientists would be nervous, too, if they had to worry about a 75-pound dog jumping on them without warning at 2 a.m.
They probably don't have a cat that starts purring at 3 a.m. and jumps about the room mewing joyfully and sometimes licking your cheek. I hate it when she does that.
This cat can purr. Sounds like a helicopter idling in the backyard.
Added to that is my seasonal pastime of listening to the furnace go on and off - worrying whether it will come on again when it is off and whether it is going to go off when it is on.
In the summer, I listen to the refrigerator for the same reason.
In between, I sleep nervously.
Anyway, these scientists said that sleepers like me get all worked up in their dreams. This entails high blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, stress hormone production and, in my case, a fairly loud scream occasionally.
You do that, the scientists said, and, Bam! one of these mornings you wake up, but not for very long, with a heart attack and the cat just keeps on purring.
I don't have anything but stressful dreams anymore. The nights when I used to dream I had written the Great American Novel and was being lured into a tryst with Kim Novak or Julie London are gone.
You need all the stress hormones you can get when you dream you are lost in a large city, wearing only your boxer shorts and strange-looking people are after you.
There's no room for Kim Novak or Julie London in a dream like that, boy.
The other night I dreamed - this is the truth, so help me Hamlet - that we had a very nice tame bear that suddenly went nuts and ate two of the neighbors before our very eyes. Stress? You bet. First thing you do in a case like that is start worrying about the lawsuits.
So far, as you can see, I've survived.
But you never know, boys.
I think the dream that's going to carry me off will be the one in which I'm trapped at a non-ending Super Bowl halftime show starring Michael Jackson.