Sleep

...ba href=/sleep/a/b and leave her sitting bolt upright, her heart pounding like 35,000 Fenway Park fans stamping their feet for a rally.

"The woods...

What happened there when you wandered off from your family that day in 1998, when you were just 9 years old?

Did you think the terror would hang on so many years?

You're 17 now, getting ready for college, for the rest of your life.

Will you ever be able to let it go?

" Trisha McFarland looked puzzled.

She rolled the new baseball she was holding in her right hand a few times and looked past me as if trying to reel in a runaway kite.

"Woods?

Oh, that thing in the woods," she said.

"I hardly even remember most of that stuff anymore.

I don't know if most of it even happened.

You know how spooky it can be sitting in front of a campfire and hearing sounds in the woods beyond the small space that is lit by the flames?

It might be only some little thing scraping around out there, a frog or a small animal.

But when you're alone, and you're only 9 and all you have between you and really losing it is a Walkman with the batteries running out and Tom Gordon pitching the ninth, it can seem like monsters are out there." She was smiling by then, realizing I didn't seem to get it.

"So, you didn't need counseling for the...

" I was asking when Trisha anticipated the rest of the question.

"No," she said.

"I had to go into counseling right around Christmas in 2003, when I was 14," she said.

"That's when Tom Gordon signed as a free agent with the [censored] Yanke...

...ba href=/sleep/a/b-deprived kids, with only 20 percent getting the recommended nine hours of shut-eye on school nights and more than one in four reporting dozing off in class.

Many are arriving late to school because of overba href=/sleep/a/bing and others are driving drowsy, according to a poll released today by the National ba href=/sleep/a/b Foundation.

"In the competition between the natural tendency to stay up late and early school start times, a teen's ba href=/sleep/a/b is what loses out," said Jodi Mindell, associate director of the ba href=/sleep/a/b Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Nearly all the youngsters — 97 percent — had at least one electronic device in their bedroom.

These include televisions, computers, phones or music devices.

Adolescents with four or more such devices in their bedrooms are much more likely than their peers to get insufficient ba href=/sleep/a/b, the foundation reported.

"Those with four or more electronic devices in their bedroom were twice as likely to fall aba href=/sleep/a/b in school," Mindell said.

"Sending students to school without enough ba href=/sleep/a/b is like sending them to school without breakfast.

ba href=/sleep/a/b serves not only a restorative function for adolescents' bodies and brains, but it is also a key time when they process what they've learned during the day," she said.

School-age children and teenagers should get at least nine hours of ba href=/sleep/a/b a day, according to the National Center on ba href=/sleep/a/b Disorders Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The poll found that sixth-graders were ba href=/sleep/a/bing...

...ba href=/sleep/a/bing.Occasionally, a soldier might get a few hours to watch a movie, make a phone call, send an e-mail or shop at the Post Exchange.

There's usually at least one hot meal a day, unless the soldier is on a multiday mission.

And most everyone gets a chance to take two weeks for rest and relaxation.Sgt.

Patrick Meyer with 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, remembers a time just before a combat mission when he had about 13 hours off."I got my gear ready in about an hour and I wrote two letters.

No, I don't have much time for anything," said Meyer, who served in Iraq in 2003 with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team.Upgraded gear Meyer is back at Fort Campbell, where he will remain for a few more months as he heals from a gunshot wound from a sniper.On Feb.

28, Meyer was outside Ramadi in a Humvee with embedded New York photographer Toby Morris.

A gunshot struck Morris in the leg.

When Meyer rushed around the vehicle to move Morris to a safe place, Meyer also was shot in the leg.

Morris was again shot in the ankle as he was moved."Once that round hit me, it put me on the ground," said Meyer, who still managed to pull Morris into the Humvee with his good leg.Meyer received a Purple Heart medal on Wednesday.While the IED is the No.

1 threat to soldiers in Iraq, Meyer said insurgents were learning how to circumvent the up-armored Humvees and improved helmets and flak vests.Rather than enemy fighters' shooting at soldiers' upper body, they're aiming for limbs — parts of the body that ...