RESTFUL SLEEP FOR BETTER DAYS

For those who wonder about the benefit of restful sleep, stay up a little longer and keep reading.

If you’re not on schedule for a solid eight hours of sleep, with power naps mixed in, keep reading.

There is something keeping you up, something you can’t put your finger on, or step on, but what?

You don’t need to be a baby boomer to have turbulence in your brain, but . . .

Does it make sense that your mind keeps going from one thing to the next when all you want to do is calm down and close your eyes at the end of the day?

Go ahead and calm down; tell yourself to calm down.

Telling yourself is different than someone telling you. Why?

Because they usually think you need to calm down after they’re the one who stirred things up.

The response they often get? “DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN.”

Maybe with a few extras.

“DON’T F-ING TELL ME TO F-ING CALM THE F-DOWN, MF-ER.”

This is where things might go off the rails.

In some cases.

Don’t be that case, especially with older people.

Just remember that the senior citizens in your circle, aka boomers, have lived through their own turbulent times.

Our dad’s lived through the Great Depression and WWII as kids.

They joined the Marines knowing they’d be deployed to Korea.

It wasn’t just mine.

Some of their kids joined fifteen years later knowing they’d be deployed to Vietnam.

My career Marine uncle went to both.

Korea to Vietnam and out back then, Iraq to Afghanistan and out now.

We sent the Army, the Marines, the Air Force, and the Navy.

They are all veterans of a foreign war, sometimes two.

They’ve all seen war from both sides now.

But that’s not what keeps you up?

Then what is? Does your mind wonder where all the war weapons come from?

Rest assured.

 

Is It Something Else Interrupting Restful Sleep?

The subject of service men and women have been in the news here in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere.

I enjoy an educated, informed, opinion as much as the next guy, unless they haven’t felt the squeeze of military service that begins in boot camp, in which case I’ll help out.

For starters, I’ve heard it said, “If army boot camp is the hardest thing you’ve ever done, then you haven’t done anything hard.”

It’s fair to say it was harder for some than others, which is what you’d expect in large groups of strangers in a similar age range.

Back then it was 18-35 years old, 17 with a parent’s consent.

My group, my platoon, was the top performer out of the whole company of four platoons, and my squad was the top in the top platoon.

From the time we got off the bus in receiving we heard all about what’s ahead of us.

The bus pulled in at two in the morning when the drill sergeants hustled everyone into a meeting room to welcome us aboard, to drop all weapons and drugs in the bucket on the way out, and if you don’t and we find you there will be hell to pay for everyone.

The bonding experience began from the start: Don’t fuck up or you’ll fuck everyone else up and they won’t like it.

It made everyone woke to doing their best. Or else.

We turned it into enthusiasm, which pushed the platoon, and my squad, to the top marks in physical fitness, the classroom, and the rifle range.

Four weeks in and we’d learned that all we had was each other.

Our friends before the army? Pussies.

Our teachers? Morons.

Our parents? They don’t care.

Our best friend Jody? He forgot you.

Our girlfriend? She’s banging Jody.

In every way possible the drill sergeants installed the military mindset.

Some took it all the way, some put up with it, but everyone got better together.

Long story short: A two-time retread from the training platoon, the Fat Platoon, showed up, ignored our culture of excellence, got us all in trouble with his antics, and became the star of a blanket party.

I’d heard of a blanket party before, knew what it was, but in real life it was painful and pathetic.

The group had a bond the new guy broke and he acted like he didn’t care. Because he didn’t. It wasn’t an act.

He quit in the middle of the rope crossing.

He quit on top of the climbing tower.

In the barracks he challenged one of the guys to hit his shoulder as hard as he could because he didn’t believe he was really a Golden Gloves Boxer.

After enough taunting he got hit in the shoulder hard, so hard his head snapped into the wall and he knocked himself out.

Because of him the top platoon had to march up dusty firebreaks at the end of the formation where the dust settled on us and carry a stick with a duck head on the end, yelling “QUACK’ instead of the regular, proud, cadence.

After that day it was blanket party night. The quack stick was too much.

The next day was normal for everyone. It was the Army.

 

New Normal, Abby Normal

When you bond under stressful conditions, it’s easier to turn your back to address the situation at hand.

Problems arise when you wear the uniform of the top military in the world and the situation at hand isn’t one you’re trained for.

At a basic level, all military personnel are tasked with kicking ass when called on, when necessary.

They depend on their chain of command for proper direction.

Now, as in the past, poorly trained people make mistakes that change history.

From Google AI:

 

In fiction, the unreliable narrator is a tool.

From writers.com:

 

What makes a narrator unreliable?

Here are a few ways we can tell:

• Narrative incongruities. The narrator gives us contradictory information at different points in the text. Perhaps something happens in the plot, but the narrator remembers that plot point differently in the future.

• Untrustworthy motives. Sometimes, a narrator is really, really trying to convince you of their side of the story. “I didn’t do it!” “I’m not a bad person!” (Reader: they typically did it; they’re typically a bad person.)

• Serious character deficits. No character is perfect, and good people sometimes do terrible things. But if a narrator has committed serious misdeeds (murder, assault, pathological lying, psychopathic tendencies, etc.), or if they seem to be naïve, gullible, misinformed, etc., we might want to pay closer attention to their word choice.

• Poor memory recall. How well can we trust a narrator if they keep admitting to details they can’t remember clearly?

• Words of advice from other characters. Some stories, particularly novels, might include multiple characters’ perspectives. One narrator might clue you in on a different narrator’s unreliability.

 

PS: Don’t be a tool.

 

PSS: Don’t follow illegal orders.

A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the laws of the United States, or lawful superior orders or for some other reason is beyond the authority of the official issuing it.”

 

Dismissed, for a restful sleep. Go to bed.