Do you do it? What is something you have said that was pretty upsetting when you found out? Have you witnessed an avid sleeptalker?

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2000

Answers

When my husband has a hard day at work he will (while sleeping) instruct me on the best way to finish cement, if I should order it with fibers, the best places to dump the tear out, etc. On occasion he will even throw in a demonstration.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2000

My best friend was a sleepwalker. I remember slumber parties we use to catch her talking to walls. It was an ongoing joke, we don't really know what happened.

Sometimes now she does talk in her sleep though, and just get up and look at me asking for her brother. One time I kind of patted her on the cheek and told her where she was but I realized she was just talking in her sleep. She fell asleep after with her finger pointing at me. It freaked me out and I slept the rest of the night with my head under the covers.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2000

I grind my teeth in my sleep, and breath funny, but no one's ever said I talked (in English or gibberish) in my sleep.

My roommate in college would often speak in her sleep. She lived half her life in Croatia, so it would often be in Croatian. Sometimes English, though. And sometimes gibberish. "But it was English gibberish this time...."

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2000

my ex-roommate talked in her sleep *all* the time, but she'd get pissed when i didn't remember what she said (don't blame me; she'd usually wake me up in the middle of a deep sleep). but she was always very passionate about what she was saying. most of the time it didn't make sense, and once i swear she was speaking spanish. she said i never said anything in my sleep. teehee.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2000

Someone told me I moan in my sleep. Someone else told me I was yelling for my ex-girlfriend, Brittany, while we were dating, and numerous people tell me that I have groan in grief and agony, but I dont understand it. One time, my sister came in and asked me for a stapler, and then she started making these weird clucking noises and then walked out. I slept with my door locked that night.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2000

Amy - too funny! Whilst I haven't had any demonstrations I do know what you mean. My boyfriend is a carpenter by trade and over the last few years I've learnt quite a bit about roofs and rivets during his sleep talks. I especially like it when he asks for my advice on construction pieces... you can see the confusion on his sleeping face when they just don't add up.

-- Anonymous, July 16, 2000

When I was in elementary school, I was camping with two of my friends and my mother. I woke up to find one kid crawling over my head. He crawled all the way across the tent, grabbed my mother's purse, unzipped the tent door, turned back to us and exclaimed, wide-eyed, "Come on! We gotta get out of here!" He remembered nothing the next morning. Crazy.

Another time, a chronically unemployed friend fell asleep in our living room while a few other people were watching a movie. He muttered some gibberish for a while, and then said in a menacing tone, "Just when you thought it was safe to get a job..."

-- Anonymous, July 16, 2000

Good grief, not only do I talk and walk in my sleep, I have held lengthy two-way conversations, trashed rooms, stolen comforters, travelled up and down three flights of stairs ... all without remembering a thing in the morning.

In fact, back in December of 1998, I was sleepwalking so often that I named my on-line journal "Sleepwalker." I haven't sleepwalked in quite some time, now. No doctor or even psychiatrist has been able to tell me why my sleepwalking has come and go over the years.

Sleepwalker: a journal.

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2000

I haven't really sleepwalked lately, although I DID once wake myself up by turning on my entryway lightswitch. (Was I going to go OUTSIDE like that?) I am, however, a talker sometimes.... but NOTHING like my husband. He's been known to laugh, holler, chuckle, slam doors, and snort, amidst mysterious phrases like "whoa... I don't know who brought THAT one" and "yeah, yeah, just let me finish this beer first". He's also bad about getting up to pee, but looking for the bathroom in his childhood (at least, that's what we think). So far, as a result of this, he has ended up in the closet 3 times (no accidents, thank god) and on the back porch, peeing off the patio, twice. Once he even opened the (doublebolted) front door and walked out, but came back in right as I was pulling on a robe to go after him. Maybe I should just tie one of his legs to the bed?

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2000

I have been known to conjugate German verbs in my sleep. How embarrassing.

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2000

When I was little, I said, in my sleep, to mom: "I have some silence in a bag downstairs."

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2000

Oh, yeah, I talk in my sleep. Always have, probably always will.

For the first time ever this weekend, I crashed at a friend's house after drinking too much. He told me this morning that after everyone left I just started talking about the subway and how I didn't have a transfer. Apparently I was very adamant that I had carrots as well.

My mom says when I was four she walked past my bedroom in the middle of the night, and I rolled over and yelled, "That is such HORSESHIT, man! Just... HORSESHIT!" Then I rolled back over and farted. I'm always so damn pleased when that gets retold at Thanksgiving...

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2000

Amy wrote: I have been known to conjugate German verbs in my sleep. How embarrassing.

Do you do that when you are drunk too? For some reason, whenever I get shit-faced, I speak German. Go figure!

Aufweidersehen!

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2000

I don't talk in my sleep, I'm a twitcher though. Most of my boyfriends have been talkers. I finally learned to just agree with what they're saying & go on with sleeping. The funniest thing I ever saw somebody do while sleeping was at my friends house one night. Her son fell asleep on the floor while we were watching a movie, and suddenly, he bolted up & started shouting what sounded like commands in another language. We didn't want to wake him up in the middle of it but it was all we could do to contain our laughter. At the end of his little shouting match, he politely said 'Thank You very much' and laid back down ..

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2000

On a camping trip in 9th grade, I was accused of doing math problems in my sleep. This of course ruined my entire high school experience.

I had another friend who (according to local legend) once woke up his camping buddies by saying "page number" in his sleep. Nobody knows what he was talking about, but we imagine it was highly significant.

Chris

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2000

I have been told I giggle in my sleep. In college, one of my roommates woke us all up by sitting up in bed and shouting "I must have left my big mouth around here somewhere!" The other roommate, Amy, sat up in bed while taking a nap and said, very menacingly, "Just wait until Amy wakes up...."

One of the more bizarre, and funny, sleep-activities I experienced was with an old boyfriend... he became, ahem, amorous in the middle of the night, and, afterward, said "Um... did I start that, or did you?" Turns out he woke up in the middle of it, after having a particularly vivid dream... luckily the dream was about me...

-- Anonymous, July 18, 2000

I don't walk OR talk in my sleep, but my family members do. My stepdad tells jokes and laughs, and my brother walks and talks. I remember one story in particular that my mom ALWAYS tells.. she was reading in bed, and my younger brother Chris, when he was about 4, got out of his bed and walked into her room. She said, "What do you need, honey?" He just gave her this blank stare, and said, "Where's my mother?" Mom was SO FREAKED OUT.. she was afraid to take him back to bed or anything, so she came and got me, and I said, "Chris, go back to bed", and he did.

If our family stayed in hotel rooms, I got to fully experience my brother's nighttime fun. He'd sit straight up in bed and say something, even look at me with that dead stare. You could convince him of ANYTHING in that state. If I'd been a really cruel sister, I would have suggested he sleep in the bathtub or go swimming or something - he would have done it.

-- Anonymous, July 18, 2000