The Sleep Score

I bought myself one of those smart watches last month, the kind that tracks your sleep, and let me tell you something, folks: I did not need a computer to tell me I had a rough night. I’ve got a bad hip, a noisy air conditioner, and a cat named Sinatra who treats my chest like a landing strip at three in the morning. But now, thanks to modern technology, I’ve got a sleep score to go along with all of it, and last night that little screen looked at everything I went through and said, and I quote, thirty-eight out of one hundred, restless at 3 AM. Thirty-eight! I’ve seen report cards that were kinder than that, and those were written by nuns.

Why My Sleep Score Thinks I’m Basically a Raccoon

According to this thing, my nightly rating puts me somewhere between a man who just crossed six time zones and a raccoon who got into somebody’s garbage cans and can’t remember how he got home. I don’t know what this watch expects from me. I’m sixty-something years old. My body doesn’t sleep, it negotiates. It goes back and forth all night like a union meeting. One side of me wants to sleep on my back, the other side says absolutely not, we’re doing this on our stomach with one leg hanging off the mattress like we’re trying to hail a taxi in our dreams.

The Night My Sleep Score Called the Cops on My Pillow

I woke up the other night, four in the morning, wrestling my pillow like it owed me money. My wife rolls over and says, ‘George, what on earth are you doing.’ I said, ‘Negotiating a truce.’ Meanwhile that little number is sitting there on the nightstand taking notes like a court stenographer. Restless at 3 AM, it says. Of course I was restless at 3 AM! I heard a noise downstairs and spent twenty minutes deciding whether I was going to investigate it like a hero or pretend I was already dead. That’s not restlessness, my friends, that is a tactical decision.

And another thing, this watch has the nerve to grade me against other people my age, like we’re all taking the same test. I don’t care what Frank down the street’s rating is. Frank doesn’t have a cat launching himself off the dresser at three in the morning like he’s auditioning for the circus. Frank probably sleeps like a baby because Frank doesn’t have grandchildren calling him at midnight asking if peanut butter goes bad. It does not, by the way. Peanut butter is basically immortal. I told him that and hung up, and you can bet that phone call did nothing good for my numbers either.

Doctors Never Gave Me a Sleep Score, and Frankly I Miss Them

You know, growing up, nobody ever handed you a number for how you slept. My father worked a double shift, came home, fell asleep in the recliner with his shoes still on, and if you’d told him his rating was a thirty-eight he would’ve looked at you like you had two heads and said, ‘It’s called being tired, go make yourself useful.’ There was no app back then measuring your restlessness. The only device we had was your mother yelling up the stairs, and let me tell you, that thing had ninety-nine percent accuracy and zero battery life issues.

Now I’m laying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, and instead of counting sheep I’m doing math trying to figure out how to boost tomorrow’s grade. I read somewhere you’re supposed to keep the room cold, so now I sleep like I’m being stored for winter. I read you’re supposed to avoid screens before bed, so I stare at the wall instead, which honestly does more damage to my mental health than the phone ever did. I even tried meditating, sitting there breathing real slow, and you know what the watch said the next morning? Restless. I wasn’t restless, I was becoming one with the universe, but apparently the universe doesn’t count toward my nightly numbers.

At this point I’ve decided the only real solution is to take the watch off before bed, sleep like a normal exhausted human being, and let the poor thing wonder where I went. Maybe it’ll get worried. Maybe it’ll finally understand what real restlessness feels like. Because I’ll tell you this much, folks, I’ve had bad report cards, bad performance reviews, and one very memorable driving test, but nothing has ever roasted me quite like my own wrist looking me dead in the face first thing in the morning and handing me a sleep score low enough to qualify for summer school.