Dear Blake,
I’m 17 years old and I sleep at least 15 hours a day. After I get home from school, I eat something and go straight to bed. My parents have sent me to doctors and even a few family therapists, but they don’t see anything wrong with me. Do you have any idea what it could be?
Signed, Arnold
From Minot, North Dakota
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Dear Arnold,
Sleeping excessively could be a sign of a lot of things. The first thing that jumped out at me is that you’re depressed over living in Minot, North Dakota. And if you’re not, you should be. Do your parents consider you to be a troubled teenager? If “yes”, then they are probably mixing a sedative in your food, to drastically reduce the amount of time they have to spend with the likes of you. You might be in the beginning stages of becoming a transgender, and you secretly want Prince Charming to wake you up with a passionate kiss like he did in “Sleeping Beauty”. It’s also possible that you enjoy the serenity of dreams while you’re snoozing, of things you can never accomplish or goals you’ll never meet. But in this case, let’s go with the most probable answer. You are showing all the warning signs of what you’ll become as an adult, which appears to be a lazy unmotivated town drunk. However, I don’t want to be too critical of you, because if I lived where you live in a frozen, buffalo smelling tundra, even though I don’t drink, I would be tempted to have a couple of shots of whiskey after every meal. I hope this helps.
Blake