I have said it before and I will say it again: Chuck Norris is the single greatest current living human being. He has a ridiculous beard which packs a punch and a killer left foot which packs a killer left foot. However, I write this again not because of his beard or his foot. I am reiterating Chuck Norris’s greatness because I wrote the better part of this column at 3:47 a.m., transfixed with the thought of buying the Chuck Norris endorsed “Total Gym.”
According to Chuck and his attractive infomercial co-host Christie Brinkley, the “Total Gym” has the capabilities of delivering high quality top-notch workouts for your arms, chest, legs, back, abdominals, cardio and pilates. Furthermore, if you’re interested in the “Total Gym” Norris recommends you do his favorite exercises being “The Pullover,” “The Iron Cross,” and “The Seated Row.”
I am an insomniac. I haven’t slept in the past 10 days (since Sunday, Mar. 2). My mind isn’t fully awake yet nor is it fully asleep. The flicker of Chuck Norris’s beard looks like a desert mirage promising muscles, red facial hair and “Walker, Texas Ranger.” You hear famous people all the time say, “I’ll sleep when I die,” well I’m not famous, but I am becoming more and more convinced that this saying applies directly to me.
When you have insomnia, according to Jim Uhls, you’re never really asleep and you’re never really awake. I suppose this is true. At first insomnia is salvation. The first night you wonder what the hell you are still awake for, yet you find intense joy in the quiet of the night. For the first night or two, there is something comforting about the buzzing of street lights and the sound of silence.
After the second night, you tell yourself that by 11 p.m. you will be safely and warmly tucked in between your comforter and duvet cover; but this doesn’t happen. By the time 3 a.m. rolls around on the third night, you and Chuck are confused best friends. He knows you’re watching him while you’re not sure why you’re watching him. Chuck relies on this quality. Confusion is the only possible way someone would ever buy the “Total Gym,” the “Ding King” or a life time supply of elf lawn ornaments for 6 easy-low installments of $29.99.
By the fifth day, you begin to see the world as one constant time lapse which never begins or ends; it just continues guided by the rising and falling of the sun. The light of the day seems duller. The dark of the night hangs over your mind like a shroud. The sounds around you become turned down. Everything loses meaning. Time becomes a series of alarm buzzers. Faces you know all mix into one talking mouth spewing out ideas which all sound the same. All you can think of is sleep, yet you can’t complete the action. Pillows feel like rocks. Covers feel like hair shirts. The warmth a cover provides is never right; always too warm or too cold. Nothing fits.
The moment you lay down to sleep you realize your goal isn’t going to be accomplished and so you lay in the dark hearing the once soothing silence laugh at you in patterns of snores and heavy breathing. You lay there until you being thinking of things to do. Have you ever answered a spam email?
Dear so and so:
I thank you for your consideration but no, I am fine with the size of my penis and I do not need any male enhancement.
Respectfully, Puberty Jones
You lay in your bed until it occurs to you that somewhere in town a 7/11 type store is open. Instead of turning off the television, you let Chuck live for a few more hours because he will provide you with some solace when you stumble in the door at 5 a.m.
Talking to a store clerk in an empty Cumberland’s Farm store five nights in a row at 4 a.m. is an interesting experience. Not because the conversation is good – it isn’t – but because you begin to realize that the clerk behind the counter is someone who has willingly chosen night over day. You think to yourself, wow, this guy is either the craziest person on the face of the Earth or the sanest; problem is, you’re not sure which.
You walk back to your house at 5 a.m. Chuck is still there, yet even he is about to go to sleep and give way to the early morning news. You wish you could follow his co-host Christie Brinkley to bed and cozy up next to her warmth. But it won’t happen.
I finished this column at 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday, Mar. 11. Someone told me that nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it’s time to get up. My alarm hits to tell me its time for class. So, with that, on this 11th day of my journey into the delusional, I am going to bed. Rest well.
Brad Leibowitz writes on Thursdays. He can be reached at [email protected]
