I've recently discovered the blog, Sleep Talkin' Man which is among my new favorites. In the morning, the Mrs and I have a brief moment to sit down while she finishes her breakfast and I sip my coffee and we log in to discover what Adam, the Sleep Talkin' Man said last night in his sleep.
This morning's gem?
"Put those finger-toes away. Put them away! Freak of f***ing nature. Ugh. Finger-toes, don't you pick things up with them! Ew. That's just not right. You start using them like hands, I'll chop your f***ing arms off. Then you'll be stuck with them. That'll teach ya ."
You can listen to the audio of that particular beauty here.
It also frequently reminds my wife of the things I said in my sleep the previous night. Now, we haven't taken to recording them, but according to her, I'm often as colorful although probably not with the sheer volume and lucidity with which Adam seems to speak. Last night apparantly I declared:
"Nobody puts Baby in a Corner"
Let me start by making it perfectly clear that I am no fan of "Dirty Dancing". I had to watch it once for... I can't believe I'm saying this... a ballroom dancing class that I took in college. Embarrassing: Both the movie and the admission of what I took to fill a athletics requirement at PSU more than 10 years ago. The one upside is that I know how to Meringue, Foxtrot, Waltz, Swing, Rumba, and Tango which has served me well at really odd times in my life.
(Like when my entire family went on an abominable cruise last year and in a drunken craze decided to take over the Latin club on the Lido deck at 1 AM. Of the whitest dancers ever to grace the "Criterion Lounge" dancefloor, at least I knew enough steps to look marginally matched with my wife who is steeped in Latin culture.)
So why I would quote "Dirty Dancing" on this particular evening is a mystery.
But every since I started on a new round of prescription mood altering drugs, I've been talking even more animatedly in my sleep. Tossing and turning, shouting, sitting up in bed, thrashing through the covers at the foot of the bed for unseen assailants, unwanted swinger parties, dogs, and bees. (Seriously, I'm not exaggerating about any of those.) My wife is blessed by God with deafness in one ear, so she can just sleep with her good ear down in the pillow to ignore me. If that's not an indicator that we were meant to be together, I don't know what is.
But lots of people struggle with this. At a recent dinner party, we broached the subject and discovered of the 5 couples there, 4 had an identical situation. A loud animated sleep talker married to a long suffering spouse.
One of the MANY disadvantages of a sleep talker, is that in their animated thrashing and spinning and tossing and turning, they often pull the fitted sheet off the bed. Which is a self perpetuating cycle, because then, caught up in the elastic binding and trapped between the mattress and fitted sheet, their dreams turn to being tortured as a CIA member, being buried alive, being forced to wear an ascot, whatever. And the trashing gets even more spastic.
Plus, it makes it harder to have a pretty bed every morning.
So, for those of you who fall in the 4 out of 10 Americans with vivid dreams and corresponding night calisthenics, go invest in some of these:
They work. And your bedmate will thank you. Adam, the Sleep Talkin' Man, if you happen to stumble across my blog, I would suggest you DON'T buy these. We at The House Rules don't want anything to interfere with the natural progress of your dreams and the bòn móts they produce.
