I was a resident advisor in college and one of the boys in my hall was really sick. Being a drug addict, he thought it was a wise decision to drink almost an entire bottle of Robotussin (talking someone down who is robotripping is NOT fun) and swallow a lot of Advil Flu whatever. About five hours after I managed to get him to go to bed, I went to check on him. I said, “James, are you okay?” Acting really, really serious and concerned.
“yeah… why?”
“Dude, I haven’t seen you in like three days.”
" … " staring blankly " … " still processing information “Are you serious?” I had him going for a good ten minutes before the other guys started laughing their asses off. He deserved it for that escapade with the cough syrup.
Morning dummy checking in. My worst case was when I was temporarily converted from a 9:00AM-5:00PM schedule to a 6:00AM-2:00PM schedule during the Atlanta Olympics. I am not a morning person and the early hours were killing me. One evening I got home and layed down on the sofa. My wife and kids were out of town, I was alone and the house was quiet. I dozed off. When I woke up the clock read 6:00. Dim sunlight shone in the windows. Oh, crap! I had slept 14 hours and was due at work that instant! I grabbed the phone, left a message that I would be about 1.5 hours late (long commute), changed clothes and jumped in the car. About half way to work the Braves game came on the radio. I thought “What the heck is this? Are they playing in Japan?” About 15 minutes later I realized that it was 6:00PM, not AM, the sun was setting, not rising, and I slept 2 hours, not 14. I caught hell the next day at work for calling in late 12 hours early.
Most of my early morning dreams have a certain inimitably surreal quality, especially the ones where I realize I’m dreaming but can’t seem to do anything about it.
My favorite was the one where I was stationed on an observation platform guarding the British Parliament buildings against a threatened Al-Qaeda attack. Unfortunately the platform was attached to the building that was due to be blown up, so it would’ve been curtains for me if the attack had gone through. After some time, the stress of the situation got to me, and I went mad and imagined that the building had already been blown up, so I started screaming holy hell…
… only some dimly rational part of my mind realized that the building couldn’t possibly have been blown up if I was still alive, so I must be completely deluded. Nevertheless, the platform seemed like an extremely bad place to be, so I might as well keep screaming holy hell…
… only some dimly rational part of my mind realized that Parliament doesn’t really meet in a building that is bright pink, ultra-modern, and crinkly, and there’s no earthly reason why the British would hire me to watch for terrorists anyway, and that I was obviously dreaming. Only it was clearly a bad dream and I hoped somebody would come along to wake me up, so I might as well keep screaming holy hell …
… only then I woke up and realized that there was nobody else in the apartment. Duh. (Fortunately I wasn’t really screaming either, as I tend to have extreme sleep paralysis. Wouldn’t have cared to explain that one to the neighbors.)
I, also, tend to read my alarm clock wrong… and when I was in high school, I used to fall asleep about half an hour after I’d gotten home, in the afternoon, and then wake up about 10 ish. Which cause a LOT of confusion in my poor little brain. After I killed my alarm clock (yes, literally… I stepped on it), my mother started waking me up every morning for school, around 5:30 ish. Problem was, that was when she’d also make the call for dinner. Chaos tended to insue… I’d fall asleep, and then hear a knock on my door, wake up, and FREAK OUT!!! I had to be ready to go to school! Lots of panicking and tripping over things while trying to get dressed and scramble to finish any work I hadn’t. Not to mention the strange befuddled looks on my family’s face when I rushed into the kitchen all dressed for school and wearing my backpack.
Hmmm…I’m not much of a morning person either, but I’ve never had any brain farts this bad
About the only thing that happens to me is not understanding what the hell the alarm is for. I know it’s my alarm, I know how to turn it off…I just can’t figure out what on earth I set it for.
Occasionaly I dream that I am falling, and when I wake up it is because I’ve fallen on the bed. Very odd sensation.
My friends ex-husband is known for having (or trying to have) sex with whomever is in the same bed with him, while he is asleep. He still claims to this day that they never had sex while she was pregnant. She just rolls her eyes at that one.
I woke up this morning to the sound of ringing and it was only after at least 10 seconds of trying to turn my alarm clock off that I realised what was going on, and answered the phone
Oh, I have all kinds of morning problems. Sometimes they last into the evening. Today I was working out at (4 in the afternoon) and thought to myself, “It’s a good thing I’m doing this, hafta get in shape for that push up contest.” Then I said “Huh?” Until I remembered, vaguely, some kind of dream I had about pushups.
To resort to a clichee, it’s nice to know I’m not alone in having these brain malfunctions. The birth of trusquirt, notorious for his poor sleeping, a year ago, has occasioned some memorable episodes due to sleep deprivation.
The first one happened in the middle of the night one night when truma and I were awakened by the usual wailing, and, with my eyes burning from lack of sleep, I’m ashamed to say I was very rude to my wife. I was convinced she was to blame for my eyes being covered in dryer lint, and the fact that I would shortly be going blind because of this. The worst part is that I didn’t say anything about this for a good while, making her think I was just being a jerk (well, I was acting like one :o )
Another happened when we were again awakened by trusquirt crying. I had read a historical novel before going to bed, and tried to prevent my wife from going to our son’s room because *“the king’s men were patrolling the streets, and could imprison us for looking after the children of the leaders of the failed revolt”. *
As I was physically restraining her, and begging her not to go outside, it took some convincing on her part that we were in Canada, and not ancient England.
I have, on more than one occasion, simply multiplied all the numbers together and been quite satisfied that it was 98 o’clock.
I’ve also had problems with my car alarm going off in the middle of the night and me staggering outside into the cold before realizing that I have never in my life had a car with an alarm. Stupid mornings.
Yup - I get this, as a very mild synesthesiac, I will “see” any loud sound if I’m in a dozeful state. Stark black & white geometric patterns in my case - quite impressive :eek:
Oh MY! I could go on…
Once I woke up standing on my pillow trying to see why there was a dump truck in my yard (that was bordered by the house, the garage, & a 6 foot fence.) Yes, my alarm sounds like a back up warning…
I worked 12 hour nights for many years so knowing if it was 5 am or 5 pm has never been easy for me, but I don’t work anymore. My husband works 24 hour shift. If he happens to call when I’m napping, he has to reorient me by telling me “Breakfast time” or “Dinner time” I get so confused.
I’m the same in the morning… sleep through the alarm buzzing for an hour, waking up to the alarm wondering what in the hell that noise is, waking up and wondering why I even set the alarm since “it’s Saturday” (even though it isn’t), waking up babbling nonsense, waking up and deluding myself into thinking I can reset my alarm for a much later time (and therefore making myself late), etc.
I had forgotten about the time I was in college and woke up one morning to find myself standing up in my bed and singing loudly. This was after going to bed stone cold sober.
Greywolf that pillow thing cracked me up. I do things like that!
RadioWave You can multiply that early in the morning?
One time during my second year of college, I had waited until the last minute to write an essay for English so I attempted to pull an all-nighter to finish it. I worked on the essay until about 3 in the morning, but I was tired at that point and couldn’t think clearly. I figured I’d sleep until 7 a.m. and wake up and finish it before the 10 a.m. class.
So I turn off the lights, get into bed, and immediately fall into an extremely lucid dream… I’m reading my English texts… finishing my English report… handing it in to the prof… freedom! No more worries! It’s complete!
When my alarm-clock wakes me out of this lovely vision, I turn the damn thing off and fall back to sleep – after all, I just finished my report, didn’t I? Time for some well-deserved rest!
I wake up at noon or so, and resist the urge to slam my head into the wall repeatedly. :rolleyes:
Oh, and I had to hand in the paper a day late, and was docked ten points because of it.
I’ve woken up, very annoyed that I have to get ready for the day, because I just did that… in a dream.
I’m likely to believe, early in the morning, that if I turn off my alarm [rather than hit the snooze], and lie back down, I will get up in just a minute or two. [As the semester goes on, I, too, become a two alarm person. One on the other side of the room.]
I don’t nap well, and have time of day issues when I wake up.
I also, on occasion, dream really realistic entire days… and it can take a good long while to sort out the difference between the real world and my head.
I very rarely dream, but when I do my dreams are set in my real environment which are very realistic. So I wake up believing they happened, sometimes for hours. Lately I’m most likely to believe an assignment is due that morning which I haven’t done yet cheifly for the reason that I’ve just now fabricated it in my head. They’re always IMPOSSIBLE - 6000 words on Shakespeare and the like - and I always believe it and panic!
I often wake up, acknowledging all stimuli, but I keep dreaming, while conscious. This has BIZARRE consequences.
Familiar surroundings of my house become alien planets, spaceship interiors, cages. I lose all sense of direction usually panic quite badly, deciding I am blind, though really I’m just too confused to find the light. And always, just to make it more interesting, I have an urgent desire to urinate.
Finally, I can be completely conscious, but do totally irrational things which I won’t remember even straight afterwards. It’s close to sleepwalking, but I respond to reality - just stupidly. I once (when too old for this to be normal) walked to my mother’s room and cried, sat on the longue and demanded that I be given a drink. When she actually went to get it I walked all the way back across the house to my bed and went to sleep.
Once, I had a dream where I got up, went into the bathroom and started washing my hair. This was after my alarm clock has already went off, so I ended up laying in beed for 30 minutes “getting ready for school”.
I have this weird ability to shut off my alarm clock RIGHT before it goes off. I usually wake up a couple minutes before my alarm goes off. So I’ll lay in bed…wait…wait…wait…then jump up real fast and hit the alarm. A fraction of a second before I actually hit the alarm it will start to go off. It’s the weirdest thing.
