Some people do some weird things in their sleep.
My sister is someone who has done weird things. In grade school, she was a sleepwalker. She even put dog treats on a plate, walked outside and delivered the treats to our dog one night. Many times she woke up during the night with her incessant chatter. We shared a room and she talked in her sleep.
The best with Andrea was a night during the summer. Mom and I were watching a movie. Andrea had tried to watch the movie but fell asleep. Anyway, our attention was stuck to the TV until Andrea sprang up from the couch, shook her finger at me and said “I know what you’re doing. You’re going for the middle trash can!” then she closed her eyes, laid down and promptly went back to sleep.
To this day, no really understands the significance of the middle trash can. Was she a raccoon? A dumpster-diving bum? And what treasure exactly did the middle trash can hold?
These are questions the world will never know unfortunately.
Now, on the other hand, there is me. I’m the type of person who falls asleep and stays asleep. But even fast asleep, I am strangely conscious of another person in bed and have been known to roll to my corner of the bed and stay there huddled against the side of my bed in effort to get away from the other person’s body heat and flailing limbs. And yes, if I shared my twin-size bed with anyone in my college dorm room, this still held true (although the body heat rule, Mac has helped break me of since he so considerately lays on top of the comforter but is still laying right against my side).
A summer in between those magical college years changed my sleeping habits some. Working two jobs, I found it hard to settle into that sweet symphony of sleep and began using Sonata to put me under the Sandman’s spell quicker. I was rejuvenated. But I had the habit of picking up the phone in a disoriented state and carrying on ten to thirty second conversations that I had no recollection of the next morning.
It got to be such a common occurrence, something my friends all began to suspect if they heard that barely conscious tone in my voice, and they’d tell me to go back to bed. I then began waking up and checking my calls to see if anyone had called and whether or not I should get back with them.
But all of that was in the past. I had graduated college, was no longer stressed with my parents impending divorce, with last-minute term papers about books I hadn’t bothered to purchase from the bookstore, with chemistry ICE problem sets, Finite matrices, and looking at my checking account and gauging how much money that I could spend on alcohol for the weekend and still be able to afford that new bra from Victoria’s Secret and a pair of Lucky jeans.
As an (faux) adult, I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. so I could get all eight hours of sleep in by the time the alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. so I could get in my hour-long sojourn on the treadmill before work. Yes, I could go after work, but I maintain an anti-social air at the gym and abide by the one-treadmill cushion rule so I’d rather go at 6 a.m. over 5 p.m. or waiting until the gym cleared out until 8 p.m. because that is prime TV watching hours and I am addicted to several TV shows.
And yes, I DVR all the shows I watch. Yes, I could watch them later, but the point of coming home from work is doing nothing, not doing nothing and then heading to the gym to have to come back home and wind down all over again. Besides, I need at least two consecutive hours of solid decompressing before I can call it a night.
With that said, it should come as no surprise that I am a hard sleeper. I require four alarms to help me start the day going off at: 1.) 4:45 a.m.; 2.) 5:15 a.m.; 3.) 5:30 a.m.; and 4.) 5:55 a.m. The first three are to ease me into the idea of getting up. The fourth is a suggestion and I usually hit snooze twice (three times if I’m really tired and four times if I want to try to set a record on how quick I can get to the gym, get home, feed the dogs, shower, make my bed, get dressed and then get to work).
My brother, who often requires a ride home on the weekends, has commented on this fact rather negatively. He’ll call one time and if I don’t answer, he’ll either call my sister or a cab. If he calls the cab, he’ll call me again (only one time), then scale the six-foot privacy fence into the backyard to stand outside my bedroom window knocking until he rouses his sister from an extremely well-deserved sleep.
I’ve told him numerous times I need at least two phone calls to wake me up, that the first one just disorients, the second brings me to consciousness, and the third wakes me up.
You can imagine my confusion when I came to consciousness Sunday night/Monday morning and I was talking on the phone. My friend kept repeating his name over and over again.
I finally, said, yes, I know…you work at…and I named the place…then I said: “Are we bringing the girls by your work or are you doing a demo at camp?”
“Erin,” he said a little more firmly and then launched into his name again.
“Yes, I know. So, you’re not doing anything at camp,” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Are you drunk?”
“Huh?” I asked because having just been roused out of sleep to find myself having a conversation with someone is a little perplexing. “No, I was asleep.”
“You weren’t drinking?” he asked me.
For some reason, this person has a habit of calling when I have been imbibing. “No, I was sleeping.” There’s a pause. “Ok, I had some sangria before bed. But I’m sober, I swear.” Lie. Anytime I swear about being sober, I am clearly not sober. It’s the same as if I tell you I’m good. Example: Erin, are you okay? “Yep, I’m good.” In my alcohol-addled mind, you are not asking me if I am sober, you are asking me how I am. I have been drinking and drinking has problem-relieving capabilities and with nothing plaguing me for an answer, I am so utterly good it is amazing.
Anyway, a few minute later, I hung up the phone and saw the call time register 16 minutes and 35 seconds. Of those 16 minutes I can recall approximately four minutes, 25%, of the conversation.
I was curious, but my friend was also a little drunk, so the convo could wait until the morning. My hand fumbled around in the dark for my sixth and final glass of sangria (The pitcher was empty. Quite sad.). There was about half a glass remaining and I quickly slurped up the remaining nightcap and enjoyed the wine-drench raspberries that had been in my glass. Delicious.
I got hold of my friend that afternoon and admitted to having no clue about a great majority of the phone call last night.
“You kept asking me who I was affiliated with,” he said. I was pretty impressed being my drunken unconscious self pulling out a word like ‘affiliated.’ I may have been drunk, I may have been asleep, but damnit, I was still going to be professional. “So I kept saying my name over and over. And then I thought, oh god, she’s at work. But how did I get her work number.”
I like how he never once questioned why I was working at 1:56 a.m. and assumed as I was at my office. That must’ve been the alcohol doing his thinking.
Anyway, we laughed at the conversation and said our goodbyes. Then I went into the living room and filled in the gaps from my story last night (because I had to tell Andrea about waking up on the phone) and we both decided that I gave new meaning to the phrase “Taking your work home.”
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