Stress, The Bean
Man and Sleep
Stress is the number one
cause of insomnia. This goes without saying. There are other
causes. Ears ringing, environmental noises, Restless Leg
Syndrome, and dietary habits can all lend them selves to a bad
night's sleep. But stress is numero uno.
Many years ago, in a place
far far away, I used to be a tie wearing, briefcase carrying
field engineer specializing in customer support of Hewlett
Packard computer systems. I worked in many parts of this
hemisphere and dealt with countless issues. Once, while working
at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, I was given the duty of taking
care of the special customer known as the Bean Man. Why was I
given this duty? Simply because I was the new guy.
Now the Bean Man was a
socially dysfunctional government programmer with a nasty habit
of eating uncooked beans directly from the can while writing
code. He would never go out to eat. The beans were his
breakfast, brunch and lunch... everyday. The bean juice would
dribble from his stubbly chin onto his relatively expensive HP
graphics terminal and eventually find its way to the substrata
of his keyboard. This resulted in sticky keys and sometimes
complete failure of his system. An almost weekly occurrence.
Usually on Monday mornings the first trouble call I would
receive would be Mr. Bean. When I worked on his system, cleaning
the bean juice or replacing keys (or sometimes the entire
keyboard), the Bean Man would stand off to the side and make
animal-like grunts like a mother bear protecting it's cub. The
Bean Man would never look me in the eye and would occasionally
blurt out 'How long is this gonna take!', in a kind of maniacal
rhetorical way. Occasionally he would whip out a can opener from
his coat pocket like a six-shooter and crack open a new bean can
behind me. Soon the 'slurping' would begin. I think he was doing
it on purpose. It was very motivational and I found myself
working doubletime to get the heck out of there.
No one would fire the Bean
Man. Apparently firing a Government Servant is like climbing
Mount Everest in your skivvies. You could try, but you are
not going to get very far. No, the Bean Man was here to stay.
His relatively sane government co-workers had managed to find an
out of the way place to put him. It was kind of a big utility
closet with a desk.
On Sunday nights my
stress
induced Insomnia would begin. I knew there was an excellent
chance on Monday morning I would find myself cleaning up bean
juice, in the Bean Man's closet, with Bean Man incoherently
muttering next to me.
'What
did I do to deserve this?', I would think. Heck, I was a trained
Field Engineer ...not a bean juice cleanin' maid. Every Sunday
night for months I would dread Mondays. When I would drift off I
would occasionally see cans of Van Camp's, Campbell's. or Bush's
beans floating about in my dreams. The Bean Man was there too.
He would chase the cans around like they were butterflies.
Eventually a new guy started at the office. I gladly handed the
Bean Man off to him. He did not seem to mind and indeed laughed
about it the first week. By week three I could see those Monday
morning bean-bags under his eyes starting to form.
Bean
Man Induced Insomnia had found it's next victim.
Brad McBride
Return
to Sleep
Thoughts
