Y
ou know you’re too stressed if you wonder if brewing is
really a necessary step for the consumption of coffee.”
That’s part of a puckish self-examination that circulated
on the Internet recently. “You know you’re too stressed,” the “test”
continued, if- You can achieve a “runner’s high” by sitting up;
- The sun is too loud;
- You begin to explore the possibility of setting up an I.V. drip
solution of espresso; - You believe that, if you think hard enough, you can fly;
- Antacid tablets become your sole source of nutrition;
- You begin to talk to yourself, then disagree about the subject,
get into a nasty row about it, lose, and refuse to speak to your-
self for the rest of the night; - You find no humor in WASTING YOUR TIME reading silly
“you know you’re too stressed if.. .” lists.
Such satire never hits home unless it holds at least a kernel
of truth.
Two social scientists named Holmes and Rahe created a more
serious scale for measuring stress back in 1967. The Holmes-Rahe
Social Readjustment Rating Scale assigned stress points to life situ-
ations. If you tallied 300 points or more on the scale within the last
year, you were presumed to be at increased risk of illness or serious
depression. Some of the events, with their point values, were:“