If you’ve ever watched a baby sleep you might agree that there’s something magical about it. The calm purity of closed eye lids and the gentle heaving of breath make sensible all those angel comments grandparents like to throw around. Baby sleep after all is a perfect state of serene peacefulness. It’s the kind of sleep that people relish and that often attracts smiles from passersby on the street or in shopping malls. “Aw, so peaceful”, you might hear someone say, “What an angel”.
But where there are angels there must be demons and increasingly it seems that one such demon is the adult version of that sleeping baby. Somewhere along the line, who can really say when, the public snoozes became an enemy of the peace. You can see it in any number of parks or other public spaces where an unfortunate individual has dozed off on a bench or is perhaps chasing dreams propped up against a tree – people avert their eyes, whisper to each other and steer clear. You might assume from watching such scenes that sleepers are unpredictable creatures in perhaps the same way that zombies are – slow but potentially deadly.
I can’t say that I’ve had that experience personally. Rarely have I observed nappers reaching out to claw at nearby ankles or dog tails. Most sleepers are a peaceful lot no matter their location, their only concern, it would seem, is being left alone and who among us can’t relate to that? Evidently many – as efforts to crack-down on sleeping in public seem to be steadily on the rise. While seeing a grown-up sleeping in public might not qualify as particularly adorable or angelic anytime soon, perhaps the act of the public nap can at least again graduate to something less than deviant. Babies need not be the only ones to sleep in peace in the wider world.
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