Sleep Habits

I have two ways I sleep usually. One way is I lay very still and breath very shallow, and many people are convinced that I am dead. Of the two ways I sleep, I believe people wish I wouldn’t sleep like that. I guess they hate having to check to see if I’m alive, and then when they found out I am, have me yell in their face for waking me up. People always tell me that I look like a corpse when I’m sleeping, that I don’t move or budge at all. That is creepy.

The other way is when I’m having vivid dreams or a restless night. I thrash around like nobody’s business. I sleep like how you’d expect the Tazmania Devil to sleep. Last night was one of those nights, which came complete with a trippy dream that would put any Dali painting or David Lynch film to shame. At the moment, I wish I could supply you with some of the details of that dream, but they seem to have left my head forever. As an aside, I can’t stand dreams where you do a lot in them. Any kind of constant moving or action in a dream is awful, like running. You feel like somebody just poured wet concrete all over your body and you can’t run very fast. When I have those dreams, I wake up exhausted.

Dreaming about work is also terrible. I wake up to go to work feeling like I just finished working a shift, how awful is that? When I first started my job, it was a bit of shock for me, and I was having nightmares about the blue screen on the register, and my dreams were nothing but cashing out an endless line of customers. It’s a miracle I stayed on there.

Restless or eccentric sleeping habits are hereditary in my family. My younger brother Andrew sometimes sleeps with his eyes half open, and my older sister yells at people when she sleeps. Not like incoherent yelling, but actually scolding you for something you did, unbeknownst to that person that she is fast and sound asleep.

Last night, I fell asleep under my massive comforter and went on a wild ride of a crazy dream. I woke up this morning, and that comforter was laying on the floor to my left, and my smaller blanket was laying on the floor to the right. I was crunched up into a tiny ball, trying to fit underneath my bath robe like a blanket, my tiny feet poking out at the end. I had gone through two blankets over the night, and ended up wrapped up in a thin red bathrobe, freezing my ass off. I was really pissed at myself this morning for that.

My dad is a “sleep puncher”. Let me explain. Anytime he wakes up unexpectedly, he seems ready to punch something…or someone. A great example would be a time, many years ago, when he was sleeping on the couch while Andrew and I played a video game (it was a war game). The object of the mission we were playing was to destroy battle tanks, and at one point I remarked to Andrew “Where did that tank go?” I asked. He points at the screen. “It’s on fire down the street.” He said. My father only hears in his sleep “It’s on fire” and springs awake and jumps off the couch, kicking a cup of coffee off the coffee table and across the room. Nobody ever wants to wake him up (I mean, you'd be risking getting punched in the face.)

I could go on and on about sleep dreams. I’ll definitely have to do a part two on sleep habits. I think I’ll end it here for now.