Counting On The Dark
In the dark of the night, I count.
Lately, I’ve been counting countries. In alphabetical order. By continent. Antigua, Argentina, Austria, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Angola, Afghanistan — you get the idea. For your information there are 17 countries that begin with “M.” On a bad night, I get all the way to Zaire and Zimbabwe.
Did I mention I do this in bed? With my eyes closed? Breathing rhythmically? Of course I’m hoping to to trick — or at least bore — myself to sleep.
There’s an old expression: “Your mind is like a bad neighborhood. Don’t go there too often and don’t go alone.” I didn’t make that up, but it explains why I count. It’s too risky to let my mind drift.
Of course counting to fall asleep is as old as the hills, or at least as old as the days when sheep herders began counting sheep. According to Mental Floss, shepherds in medieval Britain used communal grazing grounds, thus the nightly roundup. Each shepherd needed to keep track of how many animals he had. Some speculate the expression “counting sheep” has even older origins.
I suspect that humans have been tossing and turning since they acquired the ability for abstract thought.
Anyway, there are many approaches to sleep counting. One hack recommends counting backwards by one…
