Thank you for taking part in our sleep study. In addition to helping our researchers better understand sleep disorders, we hope to give you some insight into your own behavior. The researchers have compiled a list of five patterns they noticed that could be affecting the quality of your sleep.

1. Delayed Sleep: The monitors indicated that, on average, it took you almost an hour of lying in bed before you actually fell asleep. Lying in bed awake does your health no favors; science has linked staring up at the ceiling every night to under-eye wrinkles and dying before the age of 45. You might as well just watch another episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

2. Movement: During the hours between two and four AM, the researchers recorded heightened activity in your sleep. Specifically, they observed you rolling in circles, like a barrel, until you had the blankets completely wrapped around your body. The researchers, mindful that you marked “in a relationship” for our records, tried to pull the blanket out from under you, but you slapped their hands away and muttered that “you were the burrito queen, and must not be disturbed.”

3. Sleep-talking: In addition to the above quote, the researchers recorded extensive audio of you talking in your sleep. Sleep-talking is a common phenomenon in adults; however your speech patterns did not vary as much as the average subject. You repeatedly mentioned an individual by the name of Coach Henderson. “Coach Henderson, I forgot my gym clothes today, how can I make it up to you?” and “Coach Henderson, I didn’t know you were coming to the middle school reunion. Why yes, I have grown a lot,” were just two of over a dozen mentions of this individual.

4. Teeth grinding: You grind your teeth a lot. More than any other girl the researchers have spent a night with. And the researchers know you can’t help it, but they wanted to tell you that it made you sound like a cow. Is it bad for you? Who knows, the researchers aren’t your dentist.

5. Liberal usage of the snooze button: It was the researchers’ day off, Sharon. They worked really hard to get you these results. Is it too much to ask for one morning to sleep in without noise every ten minutes? And who uses music to wake up? You’ve completely ruined Taylor Swift for them. Just use the iPhone default like every other normal human.

Again, thank you for taking part in our study. We invite you to sign up for future studies, just give the researchers a couple nights in their own beds. Just because you can’t sleep doesn’t mean they should suffer.

————

Madeline Popelka is a graduate of Yale University, where she studied Physics. She currently lives in Wisconsin. Her work can be found in Defenestration as well as Black Denim Lit and Acidic Fiction.