My wife snores.  My dog snores.  My baby snores.

We all sleep in the same room.

I’ll even take it a step further – her dad, her sister, her brother 1, her brother 2, and even her brother-in-law all snore.  Every single one. The only member of her family that did not snore was her mum, who had to sneak out in the middle of the night to sleep on the couch in the living room just to get some rest.

I’m not sure if its a Vietnamese thing, but its one of the unifying traits of that half of my family.  Snoring, horrible, terrible snoring.  I want to be clear here as well … its not the soft, gentle purring of a light slumber.  Its not just heavy breathing.  Hell no.  This sounds like the hollow, dry, rattling sounds of slow asphyxiation like someone is pulling their spinal cord through their nose with a pair of grip pliers.

I’ve had plenty of time to think about this after hundreds of hours of lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to my 90 pound wife snore like a lumberjack.

My dear, dear wife has developed another sleep trait, call it a snoring accoutrement.  She’s a nose breather (most of the time), but has found a way to directly burst out a small gush of breath as the pressure of not being able to breathe out of her nose builds up and eventually breaks a small portion of the lip seal.  Amazingly, this directional blast always hits me directly in the face.

Now, I’m willing to overlook the night breath of my wife – which is not particularly pleasant.  She’s pretty good about brushing at night (she IS a dentist after all).  So don’t color me one of those chauvinist pigs that fans enjoy ruthlessly booing on Springer.  JERRY!  JERRY!  Just like everyone else’s breath, its warm, its moist, and a little fetid.  You can say a lot of things about mouth breathers, but at least our mouths get to air out and leads to less funkiness come morning.

It’s a different experience though than just have a close talker breathe into your mouth … this is a blast cone of air coming from a fraction of the mouth.  Let’s put it this way – its strong enough to toss my hair out of face.  It’s disconcerting.

But here is my main concern with the mouth fogger gust into my face.  Human beings breathe IN oxygen and breathe OUT carbon dioxide.  Its a basic fact of our anatomy.  We need oxygen to live.  Every since I was a little kid I’ve been afraid of breathing other people’s air … because its sapping my needed oxygen intake.  Every time I breathe a bit of her broken lip seal air spillage, I’m taking in a small percentage of carbon dioxide … which is slowly poisoning me.

Imagine if I breathe 1 particle out of 10 of the direct exposure.  Does that mean that my life is shortened by 10% during the exposed periods?  Clearly, a human being was not meant to breathe carbon dioxide.  You could say that its a poison and I’m being slowly killed each night because of the nasal blockage in my wife’s sinus cavity.

After some deliberation, I decided to share my concerns with my wife, which she immediately dismissed as ludicrous, inane, and dumb.  She ALSO dismissed that fact that she even shores.  A complete denial.  But what she labels as foolish, I think is logically scientific.  If you breathe in a nightly stream of CO2 over the course of years, its going to affect your physical and intellectual faculties … like sitting in a closed garage with the car running … like smoking a cigarette in your sleep.

I ask you – is that fair?  No!  Of course not!

Sleep deprived AND nightly poisonings.

Other than the obvious thought, which is “is it legally defensible if I put a pillow over my wife’s face after 4 years of suffering”, my primary thought is this:

How in the hell did snoring even develop?

My little dog, a King Charles Spaniel, named Bingo also snores.  One of the wonderful things about having a dog that snores AND sleeps in the bed with my wife and I, is that inevitably the cadence of snoring between my wife and my dog begins to alternate, like its settling into a snore equilibrium.  She snores and while she breathes in … my damn dog snores.  There is no rest between snores.  Again I ask you – is that fair?

He had to have learned it.  There is no way that this is a trait that is passed on from doggy generation to generation.  Considering Darwinism and evolution, how does snoring even make it to the current incarnation of homo sapiens?  Just imagine a group of cavemen sleeping in their caves, but Knuk-Knuk is snoring, which is the same as ringing the dinner bell for the pack of grisly bears looking for the man buffet.

The whole concept of Darwinism is that the dumb, stupid, slow, weak animals are inherently disadvantaged in terms of statistical survival and thus the likelihood that their sperms will create more dumb, stupid, slow, weak animals is lessened compared to the strong, smart, quick animals.  How does snoring not immediately put that animal on the endangered species list.  Last time I checked lions have ears, right?

How could they not hear the colossal nasal reverberations pouring through my house each night in prehistoric times and purge the savanna of said snoring clans and tribes, leaving only the silent sleepers?  I have no idea.

By the way, to bear my own failings as a slumberer – I have it on solid authority that I talk in my sleep.

The two things that I most often do are 1) curse uncontrollably, favoring the F-bomb above all others or 2) quote movies, such as Good Will Hunting.  I think of it as a defensive advantage.  Imagine a stalking predator’s surprise when I start swearing like a sailor … I may scare them off through intimidation.  Or I create a friendly bond by sharing memorable movie moments.

So I can see from a natural selection point of view why the earth would obviously be populated by a superior race of brown haired, brown eyed, short, sarcastic bloggers with a penchant for soccer and beer.