# I pit my ability to sleep through everything **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 13, 2007, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800 "2007-12-13T01:26:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/1 "2007-12-13T01:26:25Z")
I put it down to a childhood in Northern Ireland, learning to sleep through army airlifts throughout the night, but I digress. Most things I sleep through are fairly innocuous, storms, endings to films, but I really need to start picking up on some things subconsciously. Just last month, I slept though a large domestic dispute that spilled out onto the street and required several police cars and land rovers, only waking when little sister roused me to ask if she should move her car or leave it where it was and try for a possible insurance write off. And then I sleep through a second dispute, someone pours petrol through the letterbox of the same house, the mother of the family within scrambles out the back yard screaming for help, family following, fire brigade and police arrive and break in to rescue the dog (who survives). ---
**Author:** ![Rysdad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7cd45c/32.png) [@Rysdad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysdad)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/2 "2007-12-13T02:08:55Z")
I used to be like you. Now I can’t sleep through a gnat fart. Be careful what you wish for. ---
**Author:** ![Moirai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/96bed5/32.png) [@Moirai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moirai)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/3 "2007-12-13T02:14:14Z")
Ditto. Before I had kids, I slept through earthquakes, storms, you name it. I could probably have slept through a Dizzy Gillespie trumpet solo in my room… I was so worried that I would be a bad parent, sleeping through the cries of my children. No such luck. I now wake up at the slightest noise. It kinda sucks. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/4 "2007-12-13T02:25:58Z")
You’re pitting that? It’s one of my favorite abilities. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/5 "2007-12-13T10:10:36Z")
I like this superpower too, I can catch up on sleep pretty much anywhere. Everyone else who looks at me in the morning saying “how did you miss that?” disagrees. ---
**Author:** ![bathsheba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@bathsheba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bathsheba)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/6 "2007-12-13T10:18:41Z")
I have slept through the newspaper being delivered through the bedroom window. And I mean “through” literally - awoke in the morning to glass all over the floor and the newspaper conveniently located at the end of the bed. I am however most proud of the time I slept through the house next door burning down. Watching the news footage the next day I saw the fire-truck parked right outside my bedroom window, no further than three metres from my sleeping head. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/7 "2007-12-13T13:42:12Z")
**bathsheba** , I commend you on your abilities, winner in this thread it would seem! ---
**Author:** ![SomeUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e480ec/32.png) [@SomeUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SomeUserName)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/8 "2007-12-13T14:07:00Z")
I sleep through anything too. I think if a frieght train came right through my bedroom I would sleep right through it. I slept though my truck being stolen. I have no idea if my three dogs barked at all. If they did I never heard them and was startled to find it gone in the morning. [QUOTE=EJsGirl] Ditto. Before I had kids, I slept through earthquakes, storms, you name it. I could probably have slept through a Dizzy Gillespie trumpet solo in my room… I was so worried that I would be a bad parent, sleeping through the cries of my children. No such luck. I now wake up at the slightest noise. It kinda sucks. [/QUOTE] I was worried about this too but I heard them cry everytime. They are seventeen and nineteen now and I again sleep like a stone. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/9 "2007-12-13T15:51:01Z")
My husband doesn’t even wake up when the cat steps on his _face._ I think it’s actually kind of a gift. I’d cherish it if I were you. ---
**Author:** ![ChiefScott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/58f4c7/32.png) [@ChiefScott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChiefScott)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/10 "2007-12-13T15:51:27Z")
ZZZZ… ZZzz… zzzz… ---
**Author:** ![ForumBot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ee59a6/32.png) [@ForumBot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ForumBot)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/11 "2007-12-13T15:58:59Z")
I lived in a bedroom for two years facing a pair of train tracks about 30 feet away. I never woke up once, despite the fact that my house was two blocks away from either stop sign, so it had to blare on that train horn for the half mile before and after my house. Guests hated it. I miss it. ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/12 "2007-12-13T19:32:38Z")
Growing up, I lived a block and a half from the railroad tracks. Sometimes we could feel the vibration of the trains going by. But I slept right through the night the train derailed. Missed all the excitement of the emergency vehicles and everything. I actually didn’t know anything about it until I got to work, 20 miles away, and people mentioned it to me. I had a friend who was the mother of five kids and an army wife in Germany in the late sixties. She woke up one morning to some unusual activity on her street and ciscovered that a bomb had gone off half a block from her house. But let a blanket fall off one of her kids’ beds during the night and she was right there. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/13 "2007-12-13T20:42:57Z")
I will neither confirm, nor deny, that I may have slept through a GQ alarm aboard ship. For that matter, the day that someone tried to take the ship through the Drive-Thru at McDonald’s I slept through that, too. (Though I did wake up enough to hear the Captain announce on the 1MC, “Chief Engineer, contact the bridge. Immediately!” It wasn’t an announcement for me, so I went back to sleep. I did ask what had happened after I woke up, though.) I like being able to sleep through things like that, really. So long as I remember to wake up for the alarm. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-ability-to-sleep-through-everything/429800/14 "2007-12-13T20:52:21Z")
[QUOTE=olivesmarch4th] My husband doesn’t even wake up when the cat steps on his _face._ I think it’s actually kind of a gift. I’d cherish it if I were you. [/QUOTE] Done that. I sleep like a log and I fall asleep very quickly as well.