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When I first learned to sleep well

By Ed Goldman

If today’s episode causes you to fall into a restful sleep—or at least begin to visibly nod off—this column and I will have done our job.

Sleep is a constant theme in all of our lives, isn’t it ? We either don’t get enough of it or sometimes get too much of it. It can sometimes come to us unexpectedly, like when we’re watching anything to do with the British monarchy (I speak only for myself) or listening to an online lecture on the history of foreign relations, starting with Constantinople (again, these are my specific soporifics). 

I’ve slept fitfully, as it’s often described, at different times in my life. When I was in fifth grade or so, a couple of bullies at my elementary school decided my arms and stomach were punching bags and my feet were meant to trip over things (like their own feet, while I was walking up or down a staircase). I was having a tough time getting to sleep one night, fretting about the next day’s bullying, and my Dad must have sensed it (I had yet to master the art of silently whimpering into my pillow). It was a Thursday evening and he told me to tough it out one more day and we’d fix things, so I did, not having the slightest idea of what he had in mind. The following day, a Friday, he came home from work bearing gifts: two pairs of boxing gloves. On Saturday we stepped into our tiny backyard in Lakewood, California, and he taught me to spar. 

He kept asking me to try to hit him in the face but I just couldn’t: he was my Dad and I loved him and his face so much. So he began tapping me on my jaw, saying in his deep voice, “I thought you might be kind of a chicken, Edward.” After about a minute of this taunting, I hauled off and tried to punch him in the arm. But my anger made me lose my balance and I propelled my gloved fist straight into his forehead. 

He reeled a little, grinned and said, “That was very good, Eddie!” I wanted to cry with relief and laughter—his affectionately calling me Eddie meant I wasn’t on the verge of being disowned—and said, “Let’s do it some more!” He said no, very quietly and started to unlace his gloves. I realized I’d hurt him and felt simultaneously horrified and elated. 

We would never speak of it again until, during a couple of summers when I worked as a newspaper reporter in downtown Long Beach, I did some boxing in an actual training gym. I not only didn’t excel at it but also came to realize that the so-called “sweet science” of boxing probably wouldn’t coincide with my dreams of living what was loftily called a “life of the mind.” Some think of that as meaning a life devoted to scholastic pursuits. I thought of it as not wanting a career selling pencils by bus stops because that would be all the math I could handle. 

I won’t go into any action-packed details about how the next week of school went but suffice it to say I was not only never bullied again but was also sent to the office for knocking out one of the bullies’ front teeth. 

“It was an accident,” I told the vice principal, Mrs. DeLeon, on whom I was crushing. 

“How could you break someone’s tooth by accident, Edward?” she asked.

“By aiming for his nose but being nearsighted,” I answered honestly. In fact, within two years I was wearing glasses for that very reason.