Please shares the same letters as asleep.
English language happenstance? As if.
For decades, bedraggled parents, chronic pain sufferers, and distraught teachers have recognized the desperation created by arranging the two anagrammed words in the same sentence.
Please be asleep, Little Thing.
Please let me fall asleep, Stabbing Vibration Terrorizing My Left Armpit.
Can we please make early bird rezzies so I can be asleep by 8:30, Non-Teacher Friends Who Don’t Go to Bed During Sunlight Hours?
Why do tiny humans, localized pain, and other grown-ass humans infringe upon my coveted REM sleep?
Furthermore, why do I occasionally of my own volition, stay awake past 9 pm finishing a book?
A solitary night of sleep deprivation reveals my alter-ego: “Not Her Best Jess.” Even though “Her Best Jess” throws me for a sideways loop and is a scary walking anomaly, “Not Her Best Jess” is the suckiest.
She’s mean and a crabby patty. Illiterate word vomit strangulates from her mouth. While driving to work on Wednesdays, she cries over the weekly “Ask Cokie” segment on NPR because she loves Cokie, can’t sleep on Tuesday nights to save her life, and is irritated by the current political climate. She blunders into stationary furniture, cursing like Orbit gum commercial characters.
She is not a rational, functional human being. Choosing to sleep over NHBJ wins 98 percent of the time.
What please and asleep really boils down to is another swirled version of the word: elapse.
Another word eliciting panicky doom. Why? Because it relates to time.
Not enough time for sleep, myself, my child, my husband, my students, my life.
I can’t control the elapse of time, the enviable vampire-esque night time habits of friends, nor the exact moment Little Thing falls asleep at night.
But I can prioritize sleep, say no to outlier sleep schedule breaches, and always say please.
Now–asleep, please elapse.
Mrs. Ram's Jams 