This is why all those 50s’ sitcom couples had separate beds…
I have always had really vivid, bizarre dreams. The less sleep I get, the more bizarre these dreams get. And because I’ve been staying up until 2 or 3 a.m. for the last few weeks, trying to meet a deadline, I’ve had some pretty over-the-top entries in the dream journal lately.
Just last night, I dreamt that I was at a water park with Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, from Downton Abbey. And while we were on one of those obstacle course climbing bridges over a deep pool, angry killer whales broke through the drains at the bottom of the pool and tried to knock us off the bridge so they could feed us to their young. It was dreadfully unfair to Cora, who was wearing one of those old-fashioned full-body bathing costumes that absorbs three times its weight in water. She was orca-feed in minutes.
And fortunately, for my husband, David, I am also a sleep-talker, so he gets a running narration of the dreams.
He’s been woken up by screams of, “There’s a panda in the shower!” and “Zombies! They’re are breaking through the dog door!” I thrash and kick and jerk awake, swinging the pretend anti-zombie baseball bat at the invisible undead, only to whack my husband in the head.
He’s learned to sleep around it.
The only problem is when the kids get in on the act and come to our room in the middle of the night. Of course, they come to my side of the bed because it’s closer to the door – which, come to think of it, is probably why David chose the other side of the bed at the beginning of our marriage all those years ago. A few months ago, I woke up to see the dark outline of a small figure standing over me and in my sleep-addled brain, I thought our house was haunted.
Laugh if you want, but imagine waking up to see a girl in a long nightgown, with long, straggly hair hanging over her face, standing in the exact posture as the little girl from The Ring. You would shout, “Mother of God!” and scramble back across the bed, clambering over your spouse, too.
“Can’t you just sleep-walk and wake up under a pile of empty ice cream cartons like a normal person?” David grumbles as I lead little Samara Morgan back to her room.
So, do you have any weird sleep quirks? Am I the only person who has full conversations with her husband that she can’t remember the next day?
Share this:
