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Confessions of a Sleepwalker

I’ve done some strange things in my 24 years.
Throughout elementary school, I wore bright red sweat pants because I was sure they would make me popular. But everybody else wore blue jeans, and even the teachers gave me strange looks from time to time.
Middle school wasn’t any better.
After pursuing the girl of my dreams for several months, I realized I had to be more romantic and less subtle. Just before she took the field in a championship soccer game, I pulled out my clarinet and delicately serenaded her with pep songs. We haven’t spoken since.
And then there was high school.
Yet, despite the often misguided decisions I’ve made - and their disastrous consequences - some of my stranger moments have been while I was asleep.
“You would make a comment that would make me think you were awake,” said my mother, Kay Boan who witnessed some of my stranger sleepwalking episodes. “Then you would say something completely crazy and irrational.”
If I wasn’t asking for poetry at 1 a.m. or demanding to know why my toothbrush wasn’t in the kitchen, then I had other concerns and questions.
“I remember one time you asked me if there were band-aids in heaven,” said Glenda Boan, my grandmother on my father’s side. “You looked at me with this wide-eyed look like you were thinking “hello there!’ I didn’t know much about sleepwalking so I didn’t know what was going on.”
And it got even weirder.
My mother really likes to tell of when I - allegedly - got out of bed while sleepwalking, wandered over to where my brother was sleeping and ahem . . . relieved myself.
“Jordan came into our room and said “my bed is wet’ and we asked “did you go to the bathroom in your bed,’ and he said “John peed on me,’ recalls my mother.
She always laughs as she finishes the story. I don’t.
“We came into the room, and you were standing there. We asked if you needed to go to the bathroom, and you said no and went back to bed.”
‘m sure you’re thinking I’m the strangest of the strange, the crA”me de la kooky. But according to Dr. Robert McCain, with the Dream Away Sleep Lab in Nashville, Tenn., most of my behavior was normal for the age I was at the time.
Almost one out of five adolescents experiences some sort of sleepwalking episode, and often accompanied by confused speech, McCain said.
“All your sleepwalking happened when you were between 6 and 11 years old,” my mother said. She was “definitely relieved.” when it finally stopped.
Weirdness in a child can sometimes be a scary thing, especially in the middle of the night. My case was no exception.
But my mother and grandmother had some rather different concerns over my sleepwalking.
“My biggest fear was that you would fall down the steps,” my mom said. “I remember that being a real fear several times.”
Grandma wasn’t so much worried about a serious accident. She just felt guilty.
“When you were with me I felt so responsible,” she said. “I thought “what if he doesn’t come out of this? What are his parents going to think?’”
Fortunately for me, my condition was only temporary. I would always calmly go back to bed and go to sleep.
While bizarre and sometimes a bit frightening, nothing bad ever came of my sleepwalking episodes.
Well . . . nothing bad unless you talk to my brother.

Original content created for isleptgreat.com
Robert McCain M.D with the Dream Away Sleep Lab in Nashville, Tenn.
www.dreamawaysleeplabs.com/staff_drmccain.htm