How I keep Mrs. Brad awake when she wants to sleep

What you think about while trying to fall asleep says a lot about you.

Count sheep? Maybe you're a type-A personality who keeps track of everything.

Re-live unhappy social exchanges? Maybe you're too self-critical.

Worry about the future? Maybe you're trying to control things that you can't.

What Mrs. Brad told me she thought about while laying awake on a recent camping trip is probably reason for concern – for me. Or worse.

First, self-revelation. I occasionally struggle to fall asleep and inevitably, I end up making sports lists in my overactive brain (it's overactive at that moment, not in general): The 10 best Giants of all time. The Mount Rushmore of 49ers. The all-time Warriors team. A Giants team made up of two players from each of the past five decades. The greatest duos in music history.

You get the point. It is meaningless and probably doesn't help me fall asleep. But it's what I've been doing since I was a teenager, falling asleep listening to baseball games on the radio.

That's me.

Mrs. Brad? Apparently a little different.

The story begins with a recent camping trip at Lake Almanor near Lassen National Park in northeastern California. It's a beautiful site, with rivers, the big lake and nearby Lassen National Park, with its Yellowstone-like geysers and Mount Lassen.

Our trip highlight was a group hike up the mountain, going from the parking lot at 8,400 feet to the peak at about 10,500 feet – through late-July snow, up steep inclines and along scenic trails. It's a challenge, but not as difficult as you might think, although I now claim that I ascended the peak of the second-tallest volcano in Northern California.

The afternoon following our successful ascent of the peak (sounds more dramatic that way, right?), Mrs. Brad and I discussed how tired we were. As with seemingly every camping trip, the first night didn't include much sleep (we weren't alone – almost no one in our 15-person group slept well), partly because of unfamiliarity with the area, partly because of cold weather, partly because of strange noises.

"I was laying there and I had to force myself not to laugh," she told me.

"What was so funny?"

"I was just thinking of all the stupid things you've done. I didn't want to start laughing, because I wouldn't be able to stop and it would wake you up."

Hah hah hah.

Hah.

I reacted with outrage and questions.

"Stupid? What stupid things?"

Mrs. Brad is smart. She saw what was happening. "Not really stupid, just silly. Silly things. You know."

"What silly things?"

Apparently she presumed I would know what she meant. She wasn't prepared to list the things.

"Just silly things. You know."

I didn't know. Then she shifted the conversation to the highlights of the hike and I didn't get an answer.

But there's this. I now know that while I lay awake, wondering whether I should take the 2000s version of Barry Bonds (with Tim Lincecum, but excluding Rich Aurilia) so that I can have the 1990s versions of Will Clark and Jeff Kent on my two-players-per-decade Giants team, Mrs. Brad is possibly thinking of the stupid/silly things I've done.

And trying not to laugh.

That wasn't on the list of things I thought I brought to our marriage.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.