- Donald Trump is apparently having difficulty staying awake during his first-ever criminal trial.
- I relate to Trump's struggle to stay awake!
- And most Americans must, too. They told Gallup they needed more sleep.
I am not facing 34 felony charges stemming from hush-money payments to an adult film actress I allegedly slept with.
But besides that? Right now, I feel closer to Donald J. Trump than I ever have before.
That's because Trump looks like he's having trouble staying awake at his first-ever criminal trial. And, aside from the multiple felonies part — boy, do I know that feeling.
Give me a seat and a place where not much is happening? There's a very good chance I'm going to doze for a bit.
This has been happening to me at least since high school — which, coincidentally, is when I stopped going to bed at a sensible time. If I was in a classroom where the lights dimmed for a movie or a filmstrip or a grainy VCR showing of Romeo and Juliet? Snooze time. College lecture halls when I hadn't done the reading and couldn't follow what my professor was saying? Sawing logs.
Sometimes, my naps were intentional: Like when I entered the work world and discovered that I could lie down under my cube and get a 10-minute afternoon power nap and either no one noticed or cared.
For the record: This preceded George Costanza's move on Seinfeld.
Less ideal was when I drifted off while interviewing someone — while sitting in front of them. I don't know how long I was out for — probably just a few seconds — but definitely long enough for them to notice, and for me to notice that they noticed. I think they were Swedes selling ringtone software or something like that, and in any case, they were too polite to say anything, so we all pretended it didn't happen.
Later on, when I had kids and started taking them to movies, I became so used to sleeping mid-Pixar that I started to embrace the idea: I was paying to take a nap.
But cinema-sleep isn't specific to kids' films: A comfy theater is Ambien for me, even when I'm really into the movie, like when I went to the new "Dune" last month. (Not all movies: I was wide awake and gripping my chair for "Civil War" last week.)
And yes, I definitely slept for a few minutes Tuesday afternoon on the subway. Then I caught a second wind and started writing this.
My hunch is that I'm not alone here and that some of this resonates with some of you. News item:
"For the first time in Gallup polling since 2001, a majority of U.S. adults, 57%, say they would feel better if they got more sleep, while 42% say they get as much sleep as they need. This is nearly a reversal of the figures last measured in 2013, when 56% of Americans got the sleep they needed and 43% did not."
I'm not a doctor, and I don't play on TV, but I'm pretty sure none of this is anything like actual narcolepsy. It's just that we probably — OK, almost certainly — don't get enough sleep many nights, and our bodies need to even things out during the day.
I don't know when Donald Trump goes to sleep, but I do know that during his Twitter era, he tended to do a lot of late-night scrolling — also relatable — and posting. And again, I've never faced felony charges and multiple trials, but I bet that if I did, I'd have a hard time sleeping.
So don't worry about the nap-shaming, Mr. Trump — many of us do the same thing. And you have plenty of other things to worry about.