Maybe not the ones you want to hear about...
Rachel and I saw a crazy special on people in England who have night terrors. They walk for miles and climb 150ft cranes in their sleep or eat crazy food like a butter stick w/ mayo (no mustard). One guy was even in trouble for starting to have sex with a girl at a party after everyone passed out, until his 4 previous girlfriends testified that he does that in his sleep with no memory of anything.
I am not that weird.
But I do have a history of sleep issues. In college I was on the top bunk. One night someone in my sleep yelled "watch out for the bat" I woke up and a bat flew into my chest. I took my pillow and smacked it into the wall but it kept flapping in my bed. I jumped off the top bunk only to have my roommate investigate that there was no bat.
Another time I dreamt my old roommate was slowly backing over me with an old muscle car so I rolled out of the top bunk and didn't wake up until I hit the floor. Luckily I rolled out far enough to miss my roommates night stand but not too far to hit the futon. That was my last night on the top bunk.
That roommate was very good at dealing with my sleep issues. The first roommate, Jon, was a friend from high school who drank and smoked a lot of pot. So I would end up scaring him a lot more than I was scared. One night I was convinced that our neighbors were trapped in our microfridge and we needed to get them out, Jon ended up saying "dude you're really freaking me out right now".
So I am not as crazy as these sleep terror people because I have some recollection of what occurs but all of my actions are motivated by events that happened in my sleep seconds before I get up.
At the apartment Rachel loved to have the the ceiling fan on at night which I rarely used (maybe it was hot in the bed for those hoping for the other bedtime adventures). Several nights she would wake up with me standing on the bed reaching for the fan getting dangerously close to being hit. I was convinced the fan was falling on us and I had to catch it.
Literally our first night in our first house I had some issues. I woke up to a loud bang (the house settling?) and was convinced it was a gang of robbers hitting a bunch of houses at once by checking if they could get in the garage doors (I get a lot of detailed info from these episodes). As I lay in bed and looked out the window (no curtains yet) to my neighbors across the street, I am sure to this day that I saw something trying to get into their garage door. My best bet now is that it was the branches of our little tree swaying in the breeze. But at the time I thought it was 2 guys rolled up in a rug to avoid being seen by security cameras banging on the garage door. It gave me an eerie "The Village" or the X-files fear at the time.
Rachel woke up to me kneeling at the window watching intently, she asked "what are you doing?" I waited then said "yup, I knew it I knew it" clutching the phone in my hand ready to dial 911. I am not sure why I did not call because I was convinced what I was seeing was real and already made the decision that I should call.
Recently, I just wake up with the need to see if the dog is still breathing. Rachel will catch me leaning out of bed trying to see if I can hear Lucy or see her ribs move. It is a strange feeling because there is no convincing me that I am wrong.
I don't know what will happen when we have kids...
