I have found, officially and beyond dispute, the stupidest imaginable reason to not be able to sleep.  It is because your brain is insisting on composing interview answers for the teaching job your brother has, using questions that he described from his interview, and you want to talk about a sample Language Arts lesson, but you can’t remember one stanza from Jabberwocky and you’re asleep enough that just looking it the fuck up is not something that is going to happen but the knowledge that you can’t remember it is keeping you from falling asleep, and even in this weird scenario you’re constructing in your head, the not-real people who are interviewing you for this not-real interview that your brother had and not you are starting to get impatient with you for not remembering that one stanza because it really isn’t the point.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a stupid reason to not be able to fall asleep.

Typed from memory, and then verified before hitting “Publish”

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
and the mome raths outgrabe.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the jub-jub bird, and shun
the frumious Bandersnatch!

He took his Vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxsome foe he sought
So rested he by the tum-tum tree
And stood a while in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame
came whiffling through the tulgey wood
and blurbled as it came.

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The Vorpal sword went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!”
“Oh, frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

The red paragraph is the one I couldn’t remember; I stuck the word “uffish” in the line above it (“And stood in uffish thought”) and that screwed me up enough that I couldn’t pull the next stanza out of my head.

I’ve long believed that everyone should have a poem or two memorized, just for the hell of it, but if it causes shit like this to happen, it may not be worth it.