Survey on sleep habits is a real yawn

I can answer this for everyone: no. Possibly heck no.

The question, if you're curious, is whether you're getting enough sleep. Few people think they get enough, because however much you get, you know you could get more.

Oh, sure, there are those magical mornings when you wake without aid of the alarm, hear the birds atwitter outside, stretch your limbs like you woke up in a mattress commercial, then think, "I feel so refreshed!" Then you realize you are in the ocean on a raft made of woven spaghetti, there are big balloons the shape of school buses overhead, and this is actually a dream.

Are you a typical Minnesotan when it comes to sleep? We'll get to that in a moment, because there's a new survey. (There's always a new survey.) I will tell you that seven hours is what you're supposed to get. It used to be eight, right? "A good eight hours sleep" was the old maxim, and now that seems almost gluttonous, like eating a whole cake for supper.

Personally, I get six hours, for two reasons.

No 1. I get caught up in some TV show late at night. Netflix isn't going to watch itself, you know. At least, not yet. Give Artificial Intelligence a few more months, and Netflix probably will consist of the TV watching itself, then boring you with a recap the next morning.

"So there was this woman in Paris and she was on the run from gangsters and she fell in love with a waiter who was also a novelist."

"Thank you, Mr. Samsung. Would I have liked it?"

"The parts that showed the ravishing architecture of the City of Lights would have been interesting, but I think you would have found the waiter an insufferable cliché and the gangsters a contrivance that added superfluous drama to the third act."

"What else didn't I watch?"

"I took the liberty of watching nine episodes of a documentary about Hitler's secret weapons, based on your previous interest in 'Stalin's Secret Ceramic Toothpick Collection' on the History Channel."

This won't be so bad; you'll really be able to blast through your queue.

No. 2. If I get only six hours of sleep a night, it gives me a reason to nap. There is nothing as restorative as a nap. Work-from-home is now the norm, not because people hate to commute and be around other people while wearing nice clothes, but because of the opportunities for naps.

You want to bring workers back to the office? Build a few rooms with comfy sofas, and let people say, "Hey boss, I'll get that contract to you at 3, but first I'm going to lose consciousness in a dim room, my eyes twitching behind my lids as I swirl through the baffling depths of REM sleep, emitting guttural grunts, my limbs twitching as if running through dark fields, pursued by hounds whose long tongues snap like whips at my ankles."

"OK, knock yourself out."

"I usually just take a pill."

Maybe your bed keeps you from getting the sleep you need. I went shopping the other day for mattresses. I like them firm. I like a mattress that is not so much manufactured as quarried. I'd consider getting one of those Sleep Number jobs, but I'm afraid my sleep number would be pi, and I'd never wake up.

I tried out six mattresses. It's an odd thing to do. You lie down, and think: "Is it lay down? No, lie. Why does lay down seem right? Ugh, this is going to keep me up until I get out the phone and check."

You end up doing everything but sleep, which is like buying a car by walking around one in the showroom at a distance of three yards.

So where's Minnesota on the national scale of sleep? According to the mattress review site naplab.com, we're third, with 70.8% of us getting seven hours. South Dakota and Colorado are slightly more rested, with 71% getting the prescribed dose. Hawaii gets the least, probably because everyone lies awake thinking how the whole state is nothing but volcanos.

But "Minnesota" is a big definition. I don't think someone living on a farm in the upper northwest portion of the state has the same sleep difficulties as someone who lives under the flight path in the southeastern suburbs where the early morning cargo planes thunder over so low and loud you dream of cement mixers shaped like T.rexes, except their arms are long enough to hold a megaphone up to their mouths.

Should we get more sleep? Absolutely. If you're not getting enough, try a white noise generator. I have one that simulates that soothing low drone of the interior of an airplane; puts me right out. I'd get more than six hours, but I can't figure out the setting that disables the crying baby.