I sometimes wish I didn�t have to sleep. I resent giving up a third of my life to unproductive, unconscious down time. Even when I�m physically tired, my brain resists the rest and respite that sleep provides my body. There�s too much I have to do, so much I want to do--and never enough time to do it in. Sleep is the thief that steals my waking hours. Most nights I�m like a child, pleading for an extension past her bedtime. I push and stretch myself to stay awake, like a determined football player on fourth down, with just a minute to go in the game, struggling for that final inch that will bring victory.

Of course, no one really "wins" this fight. We all need sleep. It just annoys me that my body requires so much and other people need so little. I�ve always envied those who get by with just four or five hours of sleep a night. Unfortunately, my gauge is set firmly at eight hours. Anything less on a regular basis and I go on auto pilot.

You�d think it would be just a matter of conditioning. A week or two with, say, six hours sleep and my body would learn to deal with it. I�ve tried. You can stretch a Slinky to its full length but it still bounces back into shape when you let it go. The farther you take it, the more of a tangled and twisted mess it will be when it collapses. The same is true for our bodies when they are pushed past the sleep boundary. One night spent stretching to the max means spending the next few days getting the kinks out. Do that too often and, like the Slinky, you�re not much good for anything.

Scientists are still discovering all the hows and whys of sleep. The need for physical rest is fairly obvious. Every machine has its limits. You can run a car for 100,000 miles in 10 years of in-town driving or run it into the ground in 10 months of cross-country travel. The same number of miles, different level of intensity to the wear and tear. Too much heat and friction and not enough rest can spell trouble on the road. Assuming proper fuel, water and maintenance, we can expect to live a healthy life. That maintenance includes sleep, a sort of built-in cool down period for the human machine.

The mental function of sleep is a little harder to comprehend. It seems that sleep leads to dreaming and dreaming gives the brain a chance to process our experiences and our thoughts. They say it helps us to create, and understand, reality.

I never really understood the importance of this function until I learned about how computer hard drives work. As you save and delete information on your hard drive it becomes a maze of used and unused space. If you "defragment" it on a regular basis you reorganize the pieces of information so they are closer together. It helps the data to be accessed more efficiently but, more importantly, it gives programs more contiguous space to run, more uninterrupted space to "think."

Sleep gives our brains a chance to rearrange the bits and pieces of our daily life. We then think clearer and process information better when we�re awake.

I still wish I didn�t have to spend so much time unconscious. Just two hours less sleep each night and I might actually finish the fourth Harry Potter book before my daughter is done re-reading the first three.

Wouldn�t it be great if sleep were like money? We could sleep ten hours or more at a time during the long winter months and make withdrawals from our sleep account as needed the rest of the year.

Talk about a sleep surplus: I saw the New York City Ballet�s beautiful production of "Sleeping Beauty" this summer at SPAC. If you recall from the fairy tale, Princess Aurora is cursed to death by the evil Carabosse but this sentence is softened by the Lilac Fairy to a mere 100-year slumber. In fact, all the inhabitants of the castle are put under this sleeping spell. When the prince awakens Aurora with a kiss, everyone takes up their daily tasks and prepares for the royal wedding. We never see what happens past the marriage celebration, but sleep probably wasn�t very high on their list. After all, who could be tired after more than eight million hours of sleep?