Flashes of Panic

At around 10 PM on Friday night, I found myself walking slowly, in my socks, down a darkened corridor of the New Hampshire Technical College in Laconia. Both sides of the corridor were already lined with sleeping bodies—or sleeping bags, at least, and some of them were snoring—so I walked slowly and willed my eyes to get used to the faint light provided by the “exit” signs at either end of the corridor, praying I wouldn’t kick someone by accident.

My shoes were off because they were damp, and squeaked when I walked on the tile. In the snoring darkness I was as loud as an ambulance, so off they came. I undid my ground pad and unstuffed my sleeping bag hoping I wasn’t waking too many people. Then I tried to sleep.

Nearly immediately I discovered the crucial element I’d forgotten to pack: good earplugs. It was so quiet, I heard everything. Whispers. People who hadn’t been as considerate about their shoes, even though theirs weren’t as squeaky as mine. Every so often there would be a wave of whispers, zippers, swishing nylon, and sighing air pads as a team would assemble their members and set off for their next shift. I cursed them all in my mind, then reminded myself that if I really wanted sleep, I should be letting go of these things rather than letting them consume me.

I lay there for nearly two hours, and in hindsight I probably slept for most of that time; I only remember the times I woke up. (For most of that night, I was only aware of waking up, never sleeping.) When I finally gave in and gathered my own stuff, only two people remained in the corridor, and they were also packing up.

As we assembled our van again, I discovered that one of my teammates had never made it farther than the lounge where the Red Sox game was on. He hadn’t slept at all. And yet, though he said the crowd watching the game had been pretty raucous, there were people sleeping in there as well. Maybe I just needed to be more tired.