I hate getting paged.
With pages, my asleep brain cannot distinguish between a “if you get paged, you should respond quickly and calmly” state and a far more primitive “DEATH IMMINENT PANIC NOW” state.
So, I go from sound and comfortably asleep into an adrenaline laden, heart beating 180 bpm state in a couple of seconds flat.
Far worse than nightmares; at least with nightmares, you transition into it as nightmares get worse.
My apartment neighbor was shot and killed directly below the window where I was sleeping several years ago. When I heard the shots, even though I have heard gun shots rarely in my life, I knew they were gun shots even though they sounded strangely like firecrackers. I knew they were in the neighborhood, but I had no idea they were directly below where I was sleeping. The shooter shot one bullet; the victim dropped. Then the shooter emptied the rest of the clip into the victim. Then the shooter fled. I looked out the window and saw the body and there was surprisingly little blood. I have never gone from dead asleep to fully awake as I did at 7am that morning.
Incidentally, I once slept through an earthquake that awoke all the other people in the house. I avoided being unpleasantly awakened that time.
My landlord knocking at my door to tell me the apartment building was on fire and everyone had to evacuate.
Waking up a pool of water because the tent was leaking in a rainstorm.
My idiot boss calling me on the phone to ask me stupid questions (I worked nights). When I finally started disconnecting the phone, he once sent somebody to my house to wake me up and ask me a question.
Waking up sick.
My cat yakking up a hairball. On my pillow. :eek:
A rather powerful earthquake that seemed to go on for about a half an hour (it was actually a minute and a half) where I could hear the earth GROANING.
A large dog with explosive diarrhea in hy bedroom that smelled like… Well, there really are no words to describe it. It was vile.
Having an 85 pound dog step on my breast.
At summer camp, girls from another cabin snuck into my cabin at night and stacked 30 paper cups of water on me as I slept. I must have been in a deep sleep. Later that night I moved and spilled the cups, and I woke up all wet with a bunch of paper cups on my chest.
Or wild boars trying to get the food inside in the middle of the night.
But these are all one-time affairs. How about the neighbor’s rooster. At 5:00am. Every day. For nearly two years.
I came very close to killing that rooster.
The worst had to be when my daughter was about five years old, and her bedroom was across the hall from mine. Both doors were open. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by an ear-piercing shriek of terror from her bedroom. My wife swears I levitated out of bed. My body took out a loan on adrenaline, pumping everything it had and everything it would have for the next three years into my bloodstream in mere milliseconds. I raced into her room, prepared for battle. It turned out the cat had deposited a live mouse on her pillow. I went outside and flung the mouse halfway to the next county. My wife and daughter prevented me from flinging the cat after it.
Other unpleasant wakeups included leg cramps (pain is NOT a good way to wake up), a cat throwing up on my pillow, the neighbor’s escaped donkey, and a full-on catfight (with real cats, not women) on my bed.
My wife’s best friend from high school woke up once in the middle of the night on a camping trip with was a skunk sleeping curled up against her chest. She laid there awake for about an hour hoping it would go away. She finally fell asleep and it was gone in the morning.
My favorite wakeup I’ve caused was when I wired a timer to my roommate’s stereo system in college, cranked the volume all the way up, and set it to play Pink Floyd’s Time. snicker
I did that when I was about six. It was NOT a pleasant way to awaken.
Oh, wow. That seriously sucks.
Twice I’ve gotten the “somebody died” phone call; it’s never at 3 in the afternoon.
Once there were ungodly screams (not “teenagers being stupid” screams, “oh jesus somebody let the gibbering lunatic axe murderers out” screams) from the street. That’s when I started keeping my gun loaded, because it took me forever to get the shells in it with the adrenaline shaking.
Once the bed broke - the slats worked their way out and the mattress fell down at the head. That really, really sucks as a wakeup call.
My mother used to routinely wake my up by droping my cat on my face.
1.) My cat was pretty heavy
2.) we’ve never declawed any of our cats.
One time in college, I was having a weird dream that involved beautiful island girls dancing on my chest. I awoke from sleeping on my back to the sight of my 80# dog Bowser’s flexing asshole as he took a shit on my bare chest.
No idea why he did that instead of waking me up, taking a shit on the floor of my room, or even on the bed next to me. But before noon that day I had had his balls cut off!
I imagine that would get the message across to pretty much anyone :eek:
Ever have clients like that?
Here’s a rude “spiritual awakening”
(Freefall is a great webcomic, by the way!)
Woke up from sleeping on my arm funny and partially dislocated it. Luckily I’m used to it so I was able to pop it back in. Still, ouch.
The Northridge earthquake. It would have been bad enough during the day, but I had no idea what time it was, which made it about a million times worse.
Good Lord! I’ve only once heard those going off, at maybe 100 to 200 yards away, and it was so loud that even though I knew it was coming I involuntarily covered my ears.
For me it was a guy breaking into my house.
I think it was Eve, who once said that if she was ever believed to be in a brain dead scenario, as with Terry Schaivo, to bring a yakking cat into the room. “If I don’t immediately leap off the bed and say ‘Not on the carpet! Not on the carpet!’ then you know I’m gone!”
(1) My mattress was on the floor for a while in HS too. I also believed it to be the height of cool decorating.
(2) I will NEVER EVER be alone in the woods with you. Ever.
This one came to my mind, too, although it doesn’t make it into my top ten list of worst ways to wake up because I’m pretty used to earthquakes. Why do the big ones always seem to happen in the middle of the night?
A neighbor two houses down, after killing his parents with a knife, decided to take off in the squad car that was responding to the disturbance. ( Why the cop left the keys in the car, I have no idea…) Killing the parents didn’t wake me up, the cop unloading his gun into his rapidly disappearing squad car did.
A year or two later during the summer, the 15 year old twins on the other side of us decided to take a dining room chair, stick it underneath our window and do some peeping while we were asleep. Husband was pissed about that one. They tried to deny it, but awfully difficult when the chair matches the rest of the dining room set.
Camping with a mountain lion screaming nearby.
Camping with the horses escaping during a thunderstorm.
Someone with drug induced delusions insisting that there are people dumping bodies into an apartment dumpster.
There’s more, but I am such a horrible storyteller