Paranoia Strikes, 3 A.M. Sharp
2005

You’re lying in your bed, sound asleep. It’s the middle of the night. You’re having a perfectly innocent dream, tucked snugly beneath your color-coordinated bed sheets, with your favorite fuzzy socks on your feet and your favorite moisturizer applied liberally to all your dry zones. Everything seems okay to your little dormant slumbering self. But suddenly, your eyes pop open. Your heart is racing. You’re digging your fingernails into the palms of your hands and you have the sensation of weak knees only in your entire body. Your neck turns and you see the red numbers of the digital clock beside your bed. 3 am. On the button. You find yourself in your own brand of paranoid hell.

This happens to me, almost every night. For as long as I can remember, really. I go to bed feeling normal, and I wake up in the morning feeling normal once again (well, as normal as I get). But at 3am I am not normal, not even normal-ish. I am not the person I am during the day with my lipstick complementing my blouse color or my handbag complementing my shoes. I’m all 6’s and 7’s. I’m freaky. I’m the emotional equivalent of a split end. I’m panicky, hyper, worried and wigged out.

I know I’m not the only one. I started chatting up friends about their lives at 3 am. Yes, it seems, there are oh so many of us turning into sniveling drooling versions of our day selves, consumed with worry, and battling with the boogie man at that hour. There’s a common feeling of being stalked by something; sensing impending doom; feeling general guilt, and fearing . . . something unspecific. Not at 2:00, not at 4:30, not at 1. Something witchy happens at 3. The hour between 3 and 4 in the morning has even been called the hour of the wolf.

I wanted to know more about this cursed hour, so I started asking every psychological authority I could get my hands on. “Tell me about 3am!” I demanded, as if they were all guarding some secret that was not to be spoken to the rest of the general population. But they didn’t seem to have any real answers. Some said that the 3am panic hour might have to do with digestive cycles and appetite patterns. Half-digested Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey that I eat every night at 10 was to blame? I couldn’t believe it. Other “authorities” said that non-REM sleep patterns and irrational brain activity was to blame. I also heard an inkling from an astrological source about suns being in the second house and whatnot. Maybe they’re all right. Maybe not.

But whenever I need to know why humans behave in a certain way, I like to think back to the trusty wisdom of our Neanderthal days. It’s my own personal scientific method. And it works just fine for me.

Back in our Neanderthal days, I imagine, we would settle in to our caves for the night, tummies full of Atkins-friendly high protein and low carb Wooly Mammoth flesh, snuggle up on our saber-tooth-tiger-skin beds by Ralph Laurenderthal, and drift off to sleep. But we wouldn’t have had any locks on the doors to our caves, or security systems, or Rottweilers guarding our doors because they hadn’t been invented yet. So how did we keep ourselves safe from the wildebeests or fire-breathing dragons or Neanderthal boogie men while we slept? The answer is simple. The 3 am wake-up-and-check-I’m-not-being-eaten-alive instinct.

It makes perfect logical sense, doesn’t it?

At 3 am, Neanderthals everywhere would suddenly jolt awake, take a look around them, feel a little paranoid and check twice for goblins, make sure their leg wasn’t being gnawed off by anything, mumble “ugga bugga” to themselves, then fall back to sleep. We, the modern humans, are left with the residual. We wake up and wig out, make sure our bodies are in tact, worry a little about the IRS, the presidential election, the bad thoughts we have about our bosses and the lies we’ve been feeding our spouses, and then eventually fall back into la la land.

But the question remains. Why 3 am? Why precisely then?

I invite anyone to write me about their own personal 3 am irrational worries, or theories on why the hour between 3 and 4 makes us so wiggy (write to jacooz@bimbopolitics.com). And let’s all remember, tonight at 3am sharp, when we wake up in our own personal forms of hysteria, that we’re not the only ones. Remember our Neanderthal instincts, remember that no wildebeests are lurking outside our caves anymore, and grumble to yourself “ugga bugga”. Then go back to sleep.