Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 1, 1990                   TAG: 9005010022
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HEY, JOYCE, HOW I SLEEP (OR NOT SLEEP) IS MY PROBLEM

The Better Sleep Council - who else? - is heavily involved in this to the extent that it made available a lot of advice on pillows.

I really appreciate the idea of a Better Sleep Month, but I got just a little bit nauseated at the way the council talked about the common sleeping pillow.

It was not very pretty.

You should buy a new pillow after three years, the council said, because:

"By that time, your pillow has cradled your head for 1,000 nights, collecting dust and dirt, flakes of dead skin, perspiration and saliva."

And not only that, the Sleep Council said:

"If you'd be embarrassed to show your pillow - without a pillowcase - to your best friend, it's time for a new one."

Well, I should say so - unless, of course, you are like me and think that showing your pillow to your best friend might seem a trifle kinky.

You know:

"Come on up here, Marvin, and get a load of this filthy pillow with all the spit, sweat and skin flakes on it."

Anyway, the Sleep Council is serious about Better Sleep Month, and as a person who often sleeps without a pillow because he has thrown it at a cat at 3 a.m., I support its efforts.

This is serious. Dr. Joyce Brothers, that know-it-all former blonde bombshell, will be on a toll-free line to give you "sleep tips."

I will not be calling 1-800-82-SLEEP - that is the number, so help me, Rip Van Winkle - because I don't think Joyce can help my sleeping and dreaming.

Some of my dreams make showing a dirty pillow to your best friend seem perfectly normal.

Did Joyce ever have a dream in which an armed representative of the Book-of-the-Month Club showed up to collect $5,000 for books she had ordered by mistake?

Or another one in which she started smoking again and this funny looking angel came along and carried her away?

Of course not. That kind of stuff would turn her gray overnight and she'd start talking dirty like Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

Hey, Joyce, it's my problem.

I don't know if my pillow has anything to do with the lousy sleeping and dreaming I do.

With all that filth on it, it probably does. I probably ought to be vaccinated or something.

Before Better Sleep Month is out, I may buy a new pillow.

But don't expect me to get back to you with the details of a lot of dreams in which Daryl Hannah and I live it up in the islands.