Thoughts on Snoring

There’s nothing like the gentle “buzzzz” of a good snorer. The trouble is that there are very few snorers like that. Oh, we all think that we fall in the category of a “gentle breeze” snorer, but truth be known, most of us can let out an occasional snort that could fell a tree from fifty feet.

My mom, Mable; she would start off with the occasional gentle snort, but it wasn’t long before she had moved into the typical sound of a logging truck going downhill with the Jake Brakes on. Of course, no mater what the decibel level of the snore, it is almost always indiscernible to the snorer. I mean, after all sleep is sleep.

I would like to tell you of two different accounts of snoring; not from me of course, but from a friend of mine who we will call “Lon C.”.

1) I had been a scout master for many years. It was the custom of our Stake to hold an annual leadership meeting for all the youth leaders in the Ward. One particular year the Stake meeting was held at a nearby Boy Scout camp. The program was excellent; we were fed both spiritually and physically. At the end of the day, the leadership retired into different bunkhouses used to house the scouts during their camps. These houses consisted of two large rooms each with about eight beds per room. I chose to sleep in the bed right next to my old friend Lon C. and it didn’t take long before we were all sound asleep.

Much to my chagrin, my old friend Lon C. turned out to be an avid snorer. It hadn’t been more than twenty minutes and he was already up to the gas leaf blower level. If I was going to get any sleep at all, I was going to have to get innovative. I remembered I had once read that if a person were to click their fingernails together in defense of a snorer, that the snorer would hear the soft clicking and would concentrate on that noise rather than his snoring. It was worth a try; “Click, click, click”, on into the night he would snore, and on into the night I would “click”. This was war! The trouble was that he was not even aware of the great battle which was raging on just three feet away in the next bunk.

After a sleepless night, we all drug ourselves into the kitchen for breakfast. The program director asked us if we had all slept well. Out of courtesy, we all said we did; except for that dirty Lon C. He said that there must have been a mouse running around up in the ceiling or something, because he had been kept awake all night long by a constant clicking sound.

Have you ever wanted to literally tear out someone’s lungs and stuff them up their nose?



2) Since I was the scout master, each year we would have a super activity; something that was more grandiose, more taxing, and more impressive than the regular monthly activities. For years I had participated in the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Ride; the STP. This bicycle ride covers the two hundred mile distance from the Seattle, Washington city hall to the Portland Oregon, city hall. Of course I had done it in one day, but there was also the option of doing it in two days; this is the tour the majority of participants would take. I presented the ride to the scouts and of course they jumped at the chance to participate. To make it even more enjoyable we also invited the Young Women of the ward, and just to keep things on the up and up, we also invited the parents of anyone who was going.

We trained all spring, doing ten, twenty and fifty mile rides. The boys, the girls, and even the parents were buffing themselves up. They knew it was going to be hard, but they were determined to succeed. This was going to be the ride of the century.

In all we had about ten boys, six girls, and seven adults, mostly the fathers. One of the girls brought both of her parents, there were a few of the scout leaders, Lee Miller brought his father, and of course there was Lon C. We also had two vans for support and two cars with parents who could not ride, but wanted to participate in some way.

When the ride day came, we presented ourselves at the Seattle City Hall by 5:30 AM. We got ourselves registered, received our maps, instructions, and ride numbers. There were at least 12,000 participants in the ride, and every one of them wanted to start off first; there was pandemonium of course, but above all there was an electricity and excitement in the air. The crowd was alive; all buddies, all bragging, and all well prepared, both physically and mentally; or so they thought.

The route took us right down 4th Ave, through the center of Seattle, to the Interurban Trail, on through to Puyallup. We rode through towns such as Parkland, Yelm, Rainier, Tenino, winding up in Centralia for the night. One hundred miles, and we were all pretty well spent. Our support team had dinner ready for us, we played some games and then we were ready for bed. Most of the kids and their parents slept under the roof of a large pavilion. Knowing how rowdy kids can get, tired or not, I chose to pitch my tent about two hundred feet away from the main group and the noise. Just as I crawled into my sleeping bag, I looked out the door of my tent, and I could just barely see a lone figure approaching me through the evening mist. He approached to within twenty feet and then pitched his tent. Another wise old sage, I thought, who wants to distance himself from the crowd.

I was really tired, and it didn’t take me long before I was sound asleep. Just as my dreams were getting good, I was awakened by the sound of a gas leaf blower, apparently coming from the tent right next door. Yes, it was my nemesis, that dirty Lon C. He had come clear out here just so he wouldn’t disturb any of the others with his snoring.

Have you ever wanted to literally tear out someone’s lungs and stuff them up their nose?

Well, despite the loss of a perfectly good night’s sleep, we all finished the ride in high spirits the next day. Well, most of us did; one of the adults took a tumble and broke his collar bone, and Brother Miller was just too worn out to continue the next day. Much to his credit though, he joined us on the next years ride and finished up the ride by accompanying us on the second day of the ride.

So where did I pick up my snoring from? Certainly not from my sweet old mother, she would not pass on a curse like that to her second born; no, I believe it was from that dirty Lon C.



Thoughtfully written by;

Gary Hyde

Copyright 2011