Upon observing her husband asleep on a sofa at their host's home during a Hollywood party, Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock awakened him and told him it was time to leave. Alfred yawned as he rolled over and said, "Don't be silly, dear. People will think we're not enjoying ourselves."

***

I can fall asleep anywhere. It's my mother's fault.

When I was a baby she worked in a woodwork factory. Health and safety codes being what they were in 1947, she would bring me to work with her and lay me in a basket on one of the many rolling tables used to transport project pieces from one work station to another.

My mother worked with stains and lacquers in open vats. Once again, nobody had pondered the long term impact that breathing such vapors might have on my mother, much less the infant son sleeping at her elbow.

If anyone wants to do a belated study now I am available for lab testing. I've grown fond of augmenting my income in this way. My usual rate is $83 a day plus a nominal per diem. I get $15 extra for each cranial probe and $10 for trotting through mazes.

Of course, one need go no further than to read a couple of my columns to assess the impaired cognitive capacity that is the inalienable birthright of all children weaned throughout infancy on toxic vapors and industrial strength halucinogens.

My mother was oblivious to what was going on but would point to me with maternal pride inviting visitors to observe my incredible powers of concentration. That was because after a hard day at the factory I would tend to lie back in my basinette, furrow my brow and ponder my foot for hours on end without blinking. For the record, Mom, that wasn't concentration. It was a coma.

No wonder I found the 60's boring as a teen. Everybody kept trying to give me LSD and hashish. I couldn't score a vat of lacquer to save my soul. But I digress.

I'm told I learned to sleep contentedly throughout the workday din created by the sanders, saws and industrial drills in the cavernous, tin building. The only time I would wake up and cry was when the crew would shut down for coffee breaks and lunch. The sudden silence distressed me greatly.

To this day any steady droning puts me to sleep. The women in my life have taken note of this and used it as an opportunity to exercise their larcenous natures. If ever they wanted me out of circulation for a few hours they needed only wander into a room in which I was reading, turn on the vacuum, and giggle as my chin dropped to my chest. They were then free to rifle my wallet and head for the mall. The little darlings.

I have seldom experienced an entire airplane flight. I generally manage to stay awake through takeoffs and landings but I attribute that to the stark terror tickling my soul as I strain to hear the first signs that the airplane is disintegrating around me. Other than that my head doesn't leave the tiny pillow. When people joke about airline food I have no idea what they are talking about.

In this case my tendency to doze is a blessing. Otherwise I would sit in horror and contemplate the wisdom of riding inside the belly of a machine while it was breaking 8 of the 10 Immutable Laws of Gravity.

I would imagine a schematic of the airplane in my mind's eye and terrify myself by counting the flaws in its design. A macabre part of me is convinced that as soon as I confirm to myself that flight is impossible, the airplane will realize it too and plummet like a polished anvil. I glance up occasionally to see if Rod Serling is going to step out from behind a partition and submit me for your approval.

I find I can also fall asleep to the sounds of artificial droning. I had a professor in college who sounded exactly like TV's Ben Stein. The man demonstrated daily his incapacity to modulate his voice or vary its pitch. Add that to the fact that he was teaching statistical analysis and you can see my dilemma.

It turned out that I did about as well as the conscious students in the class. To put it in the professor's terms, the fact that I slumbered though his lectures proved to be "statistically irrelevant." I managed to cling to my little arc in the bell curve and pass the course though I couldn't tell you much about it today.

Sometimes it's embarrassing. Even the barber's clippers can put me under. Come to think of it, I hadn't noticed this before but there is a slight hum emanating from the very computer on which I'm composing this column. It's a wonder I've managed to stay awake long enough to finish it considering...the fact...that...my...