I swear when I turned 40, my body did a painstakingly slow revolt.  It was as if the wheels fell off the last shreds of my youth.  I started growing hair where I didn’t want it and losing hair where I needed it.  Dairy became the bane of my intestine’s existence.  And, for whatever reason, I began having trouble sleeping soundly through the night.

Oh, my kingdom for eight straight hours of uninterrupted slumber.

At some point in the night, one of four things happen.  1) I would have an unwavering urge to pee.  2) I would be too hot or too cold …  or both, at the same time.  3) I’d suffer some sort of debilitating cramp in my leg, foot or earlobe.  Or 4) some random, innocuous thought would wake me up out of blissful R.E.M.

Why my mind starts going in to hyper-overdrive at around 4:12am each morning, I’ll never know.  And it’s completely arbitrary stuff that NO one should EVER worry about, let alone in the pre-dawn hours.

This morning’s early wake up call came at 4:41 a.m. when I had this zinger pop in to my head:  “What ever happened to Melanie Mayron from ABC’s “Thirtysomething”?  And, more importantly, why did I never watch that show?”  I couldn’t fall back asleep until I got up, grabbed my computer and Google’d her.  And I may have looked briefly at Amazon.com to see if there was a DVD box set of “Thirtysomething” for cheap.

On Monday, I woke up abruptly with the Michael Jackson refrain “mamasay mamasa mamakusa” reverberating through my medulla oblongata. Again, my brain would NOT let that infectious lyric go … and I was forced to look up its origin. Turns out it’s an African chant.  Joy.

I’m not sure when or how Rainman suddenly entered my body, but I’ve become quite knowledgeable on any number of insipid things simply because my brain won’t shut off.  Like … did you know that Honeycomb cereal was created in 1965?  Last week, I gleaned this information when  my subconscious suddenly regurgitated this gem at 4:17 a.m.:

Honeycomb’s big…yeah yeah yeah!

It’s not small…no no no!

Honeycomb’s got…a big big bite!

Big big (taste/crunch) in a big big bite!”

Believe me, I’ve considered trying a sleeping pill or something to force me into unconsciousness.  But I’m not a big proponent of side effects.  Besides, how many people can say they’ve researched the complete history of Poughkeepsie, New York at 3:10 a.m.?

Man, I gotta take a nap.