As I write this it’s pushing midnight and school starts tomorrow. I’m thinking about all the kids who went to bed tonight who won’t sleep well because of anxiety over school starting. The bullies will sleep well and the kids who believe life is all about good grades will sleep well but lots of others won’t.

Others who will probably sleep soundly are those kids born with the reunion-gene; who will grow up to be the adults who will plan the 25-year High School Class Reunion; who will send out the “big news” that the “Class of Yadayada” is getting together at the “Rainbow Ballroom” for a chance to “reconnect with old friends again.” Those would be the same “old friends” who gave you all those anxious, sleepless nights when you were a kid.

I’m tired and that’s probably what got me to thinking about sleep.

George Bernard Shaw is reputed to have called marriage an alliance between a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.

Ernest Hemingway said, “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” Just the opposite was Tupac Shakur: “The only time I have problems is when I sleep.”

See, right there is a quandary for the average sleeper.

Both of those men, one who relished sleep and one who didn’t – writer and rapper – died sooner than they should have.

Comedian Henny Youngman once said if you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll regret tomorrow morning, sleep late. And it was Alexander Dumas who said, “I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.”

Back in 2008, a Centers for Disease Control poll found that the sleepiest Americans were in West Virginia, but the section of the country that complained most about not getting enough sleep was the southeast. Alabama came in No. 8 in that poll.

The poll said people who live on islands get the most sleep: Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands.

Three years after the CDC poll, another poll named Birmingham as the No. 2 most sleep deprived city in the U.S., surpassed only by Detroit.

Me, I have often thought the State of Alabama was pretty much asleep all the time, but the polls say no; we’re actually sleep deprived.

Maybe that’s why we’re so cantankerous and irascible. My question is what are we doing while we’re up at night? Raiding the cookie jar? Eating Rocky Road? Watching infomercials? Tossing and turning over some foolishness? Honestly, I don’t know the answer. I’m just throwing this stuff out there for consideration.

Sleep on it and see what you come up with.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and author.