If you’re like me, one of your biggest regrets in life is that you never made it as an Olympic athlete. And even though you stink at sports, find the Olympics kind of boring and are afraid of angry old Romanian men, nothing can stop the dream of standing on the ceremonial riser, collecting a gold medal and making an awesome movie/double album with the Village People.
But rather than mope around and dwell on things that could’ve been, I’m going to steal a page from our friends to the North to help ensure that future generations of husky, unathletic Americans have a chance to succeed where I’ve failed.
As you’ll recall, the Canadians, sad from years of not winning many medals, solved their own problem in 1988 by inventing a “sport” called “curling”. And while that bizarre hybrid of ice hockey and housework might not have been the best game ever created, it got the job done: the Canadians won lots of medals and their national pride was restored.
Now all I needed was to come up with a sport that I could personally dominate. After eliminating all activities that involved balls, running or coordination it hit me:
Competitive Sleeping
It’s literally a dream come true! You see, while everyone sleeps, some of us are just better at it than others. I, for one, am a rock star sleeper that can easily put up 12 hours without batting an eye.
The best part is that I’ve already figured out the first 5 events:
Hibernation: Who can sleep the longest, uninterrupted stretch? You better build up some serious bladder strength if you want to go the distance!
Mommy, Help!: Only moms of newborns are eligible to compete in this nerve-wracking event, where we pipe in the sound of crying babies to see who wakes first!
Morning Joe (brewed by Starbucks): Who can fall asleep first after chugging a shot of espresso? In this exciting elimination battle we add another shot of caffeine each round!
Noise Pollution: Sure, sleeping through the classical music phase of “noise pollution” might be easy – but only the real pros can slumber soundly through speed metal.
Bed-doin’: Sleeping on a comfy mattress is easy, but can you handle a cold cement floor? How about a stained futon in a dorm room? This event mixes up the sleeping surfaces to see who’s got the most game.
The more I think about it, the more excited I get. I’m barely scratching the surface here. We haven’t even talked about pillows, thread-count, darkness, bad bedmates, etc. There are infinite variations that we could explore in the field of competitive sleeping.
With enough support I think we can even fast-track this event and get it approved in time for the 2016 Olympics in Chicago. Who’s with me?
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Carl // Sep 17, 2009 at 8:00 pm
You understand these are going to be judged events, right? First, the officiating organization will have to decide which level of sleep — i.e., stages 2 through 4, and REM — will constitute “sleep” for the purposes of the competition. And then the monitoring method will need to be decided. Presumably, this will involve electro-encephalography, which will require reading by skilled physiologist judges. You can be sure that when Viktor Sawzlogz of the Czech Republic goes up against you in the finals, the Eastern European judges will all read his EEGs as full-on REM sleep, and award him fives straight across, while they assign you mere level-2 sleep. Judged events just aren’t real sports.
Mitch // Sep 17, 2009 at 8:25 pm
There are two big problems with judging traditional olympic events. In ‘opinion’ scoring events (i.e. figuring skating) the judges are subconsciously biased towards the country’s whose cuisine they prefer. In ’speed’ scoring events the talent level is usually so close that they need to go to the 1/100th of a second level to determine a winner. In my mind anything under a full second is really a tie.
But this won’t be a problem in sleeping, as we’ll see different athletes vary their scores by ~15 minutes. As far as style points go, I suspect that sleepers will quickly learn that back sleeping is the only way to go. Also, the obese will find that snoring/sleep apnea issues will eliminate them from the competitive field quite early on.
In other words, Viktor and his krooked komrades can try to cheat all they like, but the scores won’t be nearly close enough to pull off an undeserved upset.
BL // Sep 17, 2009 at 8:27 pm
I would stand no chance in the hibernation category, but you might as well consider me a lock for the gold in the noise pollution competition (freshman year fire alarms were no match for this guy). Are these “athletes” subjected to the same “tests” that the others are? I see that becoming a serious headwind for the sleepers…
Mitch // Sep 17, 2009 at 9:06 pm
BL,
We’ll go NBA-style on the drug testing: no performance enhancers (e.g. Ambien) but everything else is a-okay as long as you wear a suit on the charter!