HA! I knew it. Night owls are mutants!

@f00l Well yes I post here late at night at times. BUT…given a choice I would go to bed about 9:30 or 10pm and be up at 6-6:30am. Used to do that when I lived in my house (unless I was up late trying to ruin sneak out plans of brat child since DHS takes a dim view of chaining a kid to their bed). I live in a crap built apartment building. Doesn’t really get quiet here until around 1am. Even with ear plugs I find it hard to sleep through the racket.

@Kidsandliz

Manhattan is not known for quiet streets at any time of night, and my entire neighborhood was noisy, a very short distance (mere steps) away from 2 major thru-streets, both with all night delivery truck traffic.

And we were only on the second floor. Not high up. And had no a/c. And the previous tenants had torn out the sheetrock on the street-facing walls, which made it damned cold in winter, but the exposed brick was lovely, and we left it as it.

And I lived down the street from 2 bakeries that got supply delivery trucks between 2-4AM. And 1 block or so from a pretty active dance club. And about a block or so the other way from a reasonably active after-hours club.

And there were always intermittent sirens every night. At least 1 every two hours, often more, even on weeknights.

The noise cake topper was the iron foundry directly across the street - perhaps 40-50 feet away. On weekdays, the first shift began at 4AM. The place made exactly the sort of noise, at the decibel level, you would expect to come from such a place, esp since, when the weather was nice, they operated with various doors and windows open. I have no idea what the area city code limitations were on noise, but in Manhattan, every neighborhood is both commercial and residential, except for the streets populated by extreme wealth. I ever heard any complaints about the noise.

I just learned how to sleep through it. For people without unusual sensitivities, there can successful adaptions, even if not healthy ones. Just go without sleep long enough, because of noise, and because of life, try to go without sleep because there is so much to do … and stay up late so often … people’s bodies and brains figure it out.

On weekdays, usually asleep by 1-2AM. If I was still awake an hour or so after the iron foundry started up, I knew I had usually stayed up long enough that night.

Curiously, everyone who lived nearly seemed to adapt to be triggered awake by some noises and not others, as new parents are. We could sleep right through the trucks, the foundry, the drunken folk, the sirens - but if some “unloud”, even fairly soft, but unusual sound happened - say a window at ground level around the corner on one of the thru streets being broken, tho not loudly - half the neighborhood seemed to register the aberration and wake up, and within minutes there would be a lot of people outside checking things out without any signal having been given. We heard the soft abnormal sounds and slept thru the normal factory sounds.

@f00l City sounds have always helped me sleep, and when I lived in a first-floor apt. in a relatively noisy city, there were plenty of them. I found it interesting that one thing that managed to wake me (and many others) up in the complex was the flashing lights of a fire truck in our parking lot.

@brhfl

I can see being awakened by the light but not the noise, since the light was not steady, but flashed constantly any over a period of time, and light changes are a biological wake signal.

I suppose if you had a set of flashing police lights in your bedroom, on all night, you would eventually learn to get sleep of some sort.

@f00l Exactly. It makes perfect sense but still one of those things that makes you think ‘hey, bodies and brains are kinda neat I guess.’

@f00l I would never get used to that kind of noise. My entire life I have been a light sleeper (much to my daughter’s dismay too LOL).

@Kidsandliz
Curiously, I am a light sleeper. I always woke up as a kid, once I got to elementary school age, if my parents walked softly down the hall toward our rooms. I heard them before they touched the door.

I’m still like that I think. Anything that is a variant from the expected, or indicates that something or someone or some event needs attention, even if it’s soft, or barely within hearing, I wake for, to my knowledge. On the very rare occasions when I don’t wake up to light noises that indicate “pay attention to something” to my sleeping brain, I wake up thoroughly confused and groggy and feeling like I had taken sleeping pills and can’t figure how to operate for hours after waking. (Don’t take sleeping pills).

It’s like my brain decided “wake for this barely noticeable interesting noise”, “sleep thru this other much louder routine noise that needs no inspection”.

I dunno. That’s my image of my sleeping pattern. I also rarely remember dreams, and if I do remember them, they evaporate quickly (I am not trying to remember them unless they were unusually vivid and interesting for some reason anyway.)

But who really knows, unless we have some other perceptive and trusted person around to observe and answer questions? I could be thoroughly self-deceived.

Supposedly, the brains of parents of newborns auto-differentiate noises during sleep this way. Being constantly sleep-deprived, they can sleep through sirens, barking dogs, and teenage parties nearby, but tend to wake for tiny noises from the child.

@thismyusername LOL

@thismyusername Actually this is about those who hardly need any sleep or those who sleep from 6pm to 3am. As a result morning people who still need a full night’s sleep and sleep “normal” hours are the only non-mutants out there. : )

@Pantheist
The whole “youth” thing helps this greatly.

@f00l Haha, I feel like I’m getting old. I can’t drink like I used to for sure.