Question of the Day

[telophase]

Actually, I'm about to head off and lead a meeting*, but here's a question for you to provide a bit of interesting reading in the comments, ripped off of a Skepchick Afternoon Inquisition question:

Do you sleepwalk or talk in your sleep, or have you ever done so? If so, what did you do/say?

I have had no reports of my doing either of those, but a former roommate told me that she used to sleepwalk a lot, and her family was surprised to find her in the living room once, trying to open the windows in her sleep because she dreamed there was a tornado coming.**

--

* I am bringing a box of crayons to it for people to use. No lie.

** Old wives' tale that opening the windows equalizes pressure and prevents them from blowing out when there's a tornado. Windows get broken in tornadoes because the building shifts and stresses them, or because things like debris, mailboxes, cows, and other buildings get thrown through them. Your average house leaks so much air that changes in air pressure don't do a damn thing to the windows.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/199497.html

[telophase]

Hee!

[coraa]

I talk in my sleep, but I don't sleepwalk. Usually it's apparently gibberish (the boy says he can't even pick out distinct words, let alone phrases or sentences), but sometimes when I'm right on the cusp of sleep (either falling asleep or waking up), I'll overlay my dream on the real world and then talk clearly, albeit nonsensically. One time I apparently had a recognizable -- if somewhat baffling -- argument with my roommate, where I was upset with her for eating all the chocolate. (The chocolate had only ever existed in my dream, and so she was puzzled.) (I apologized after I woke all the way up.) Another time I insisted that my boyfriend kill the spider on the wall... which, again, only existed in the dream. I can apparently carry on a fairly coherent conversation while mostly asleep, for some time, before my brain wakes me up all the way.

[ailelie]

According to a roommate, I once sat up on bed, turned to her (she was at her computer, late night assignment finishing), gibbered off something that sounded German, and then returned to sleep. I've absolutely no recollection, nor have I been told of other incidents.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Once, when I was in college--a bit late to start sleepwalking--I found myself in the living room in the process of unlocking and opening the front door. I got myself back to bed and in the morning found the front door quite unlocked. D: Fortunately, it hasn't happened since.

I know I sometimes talked in my sleep as a kid (I think everyone does; it's just a matter of whether anyone's around and awake to report it) and at least once screamed horribly. Not sure if I do once in a while these days or not, but C.'s done it a handful of times while dreaming, so I suspect I do as well (I just sleep lighter than he does).

[herchuckness.livejournal.com]

Yes! I've done this all my life. Just a few examples:

• There are stories of me as a kid doing weird things like getting up and moving my pillow to a chair in another room (no idea), walking around talking to my mother about a dream I had (and not remembering either later on), etc.


• When I was first learning web design, my boyfriend at the time used to report that I'd wave my arms above my head, muttering about the supercool pages floating above me that I was trying to catch and about the code I thought they were made with


• I had a whole conversation with ayonoi one night during Yaoi-con a few years ago, when she back to the room in between all-night video panels. She could tell I wasn't awake - on her way out she said "You should go back to sleep" and apparently I said "okay", fell back into bed, and was instantly out cold.


• During my last trip to Japan, I woke up midway through the arc of a spectacular yelling leaping attack from the bed to the (not really all that) far wall of our hotel room. I'd dreamed it was someone menacing standing there, with my fist raised and clenched as though I still had my dream-knife there in reality. I felt both sheepish and kind of proud when I hit the wall. XD

[ninjoo.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever sleepwalked, but I do mumble or speak a bit. And I tremble, so I'm told. I will only stop when fiancé wraps his arm tightly around me. And I tap him on the shoulder until he wakes up, and then I'll stop. And start again as he dozes off. lol. Not that I can remember any of this!

[affreca.livejournal.com]

I talk in my sleep. A lot. I'll dream about my jobs. When working at a gas station, I kept trying to sell cigarettes, when working telephone support for Immigration I kept trying to renew green cards.

I've only sleptwalked twice. I'd just come back from a research experience in Alaska, and had it in my head that I had to wash my test tubes. Thankfully, I'd been sleeping on the couch and had on PJs, because I managed to make it out of the dorm before I woke up. In fact, my first awake thought was "Damn, I don't know the doorcode yet".

Smart thing would have been to go over to my boyfriend's dorm (they didn't bother locking the building). Instead I trudged over to the computer center (only free place I knew open 24 hours) and ran into my exboyfriend (who I hadn't talked to in 9 months and didn't even live in town).

I sleptwalked again the next day (during a nap), and was woken up by a roommate trying to figure out what I was looking for. Thankfully, that's it.

[puppleball.livejournal.com]

Marco once rolled over, said Dwarves, Dwarves, Dwarves! mumbled something else under his breath and was unresponsive after that. It was amusing. I've been known to talk in my sleep, but don't remember what I've said.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever sleepwalked, but my girlfriend tells me I occasionally talk or, more often, laugh in my sleep. The most memorable conversation being one time when I laughed, and she said, "Why are you laughing?"

"That guy," I said.

"What guy?" she asked.

"He looks like a shaved turtle!"

"What?"

And then I fell back asleep and didn't say anything else. Luckily, in the morning I remembered enough of what I had been dreaming to clarify that I had been talking about James Carvile from CNN. Why I was dreaming about James Carvile, no idea.

Old wives' tale that opening the windows equalizes pressure

Heh. I remember being told to close all windows and doors during tornado drills when I was little. Supposedly to help block some of the flying debris, I think was the rational.

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

I'm told I used to sleepwalk a lot when I was younger. It wasn't until I moved away that I found out for myself that this was so. I moved from the flatlands of East Texas to the mountains of New Mexico, and the door to my apartment faced towards a cliff (approximately the same distance as the length of the hall from my bedroom in the house I moved away from).

I went to bed my first night there and woke up in a snow drift at the bottom of the cliff in my underwear. I'm fairly sure that was the last time I've ever sleptwalked (sleepwalked? sleptwalk?).

I had a girlfriend that used to ... well, basically, we dated for two months and she came over and spent the night fairly often. She would wake me up in the middle of the night and ... well, you can guess. Sometimes I'd wake up to find her smiling down at me, and that was a quite nice way to wake up. Later on when she said she thought she was ready for our first time the conversation that followed was very confusing and awkward for both of us, and was the beginning of the end. I feel a little guilty for how violated this situation made her feel, but I had no reason to suspect she was essentially sleep-walking without the walking; she always seemed alert and was the one nudging me awake. *sigh*

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

I have been told that I talk in my sleep, and also laugh. Nobody has ever told me exactly what I SAID, except for one friend who informed me that I came up with "Boom! Kablammo!"

[chisotahn]

I've done all of the above, for years. As a child, I was very prone to sleepwalking into my parents' bedroom, as well as sleeptalking. Sometimes in hilarious ways, too - apparently I once pounded loudly on the door to my room while crying "NO!! NO MORE MATH!!"

... I don't know.

Nowadays, I still sleeptalk and occasionally will sleep-throw-things across the room.

[kurobahikaru.livejournal.com]

I have apparently had entire conversations with people while asleep. At least one was at a friend's house, and I was trying to keep his snake from biting my toes. Said snake was safely in an aquarium.

I also broke a corkboard that hung next to my bed and split the top off my big toe while fighting monsters with the Power Rangers in Angel Grove when I was 12ish. I remember kicking it really hard, then waking up to my foot hurting and my toe bleeding.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

My parents used to have whole conversations with me while I was asleep, some more coherent than others. I also once walked down the hall to their bedroom to ask them if I could sleep in their bed. Imagine my surprise when I woke up. Mom claims she once found me sitting downstairs under the dining room table with the light turned on.

[snarp]

My sister once said in her sleep, very clearly and in a withering tone, "It's called child abuse, moron." This is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect her to say in an argument. We all took it as evidence that there is no actual divide between her conscious and unconscious mind.

I once got up and halfway got dressed while asleep, then laid back down, on my laundry pile. When the alarm woke me, I was really hot because I'd put my clothes on over my pajamas.