Last November, while I was in Italy, I went to Parma to see Bjork at the Teatro Regio. (It was amazing.) I didn’t secure accommodations before I went, and was unable to find anything within 50 miles of Parma, due to some convention going on in Bologna.
I wandered to the train station after the show and found a six-hour train going to Rome leaving at midnight, so I pulled out my Kilometric pass and climbed aboard. I hadn’t planned on going back to Rome for another week, at least, but travel plans are made to be broken.
I slept throught a performance of The Nutcracker. We had received complimentary tickets and really wanted to go. But I had a cold at the time – so I got all hopped up on cold meds. Dark theater, seats up in the nosebleed section, warm environment . . . how could I possibly stay awake?
Mr. S used to sleep lying across two chairs in the typesetting room on his breaks in the place where we both used to work.
On one of my long road trips I slept in the trunk of my car. Sorta.
I had a Dodge Shadow at the time which actually is a hatchback, but it’s sort of disguised. To look at it, you’d think it had a regular trunk – kinda cool because you could fill up the back like a regular hatckback, but it didn’t have the huge window that lets everyone walking by look in and see what’s in your trunk.
I pulled into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn. Being a small female travelling in the wee hours, I was rather nervous. So rather than just curl up in the back seat, I folded the seat down, dragged lots of junk out of my trunk, slid most of my body into the trunk with my head and shoulders out on the seat, and arranged the junk around the not-in-trunk parts of my body to disguise myself as “trunk stuff.”
I’ve also slept in comfy hidey-holes I found in a theatre when I worked there very late at night. And in a very comfy, well hidden hidey-hole on campus when I was pulling an all-nighter and didn’t want to be distrubed (we used to pull pranks on those unfortunates who fell asleep in the studio and I didn’t want to wake up to find that they’d painted me blue.)
When I was a teen and lived on the streets in downtown Seattle I slept on top of a retail building a few times. It was a bit chilly but had a nice view of the stars :).
It wasn’t me, but my father tells the story of hitch-hiking and freight-train-hopping across the US just after WWII. He and a friend had tied themselves to the catwalk that runs across the top of boxcars, so they could sleep without being shaken off by the movement of the train. (Why they weren’t in the boxcar I don’t remember. Maybe it was too hot, or maybe they couldn’t find an open one.)
In the middle of the night, a train worker who was walking the length of the train woke them up to tell them that the train was coming to a tunnel, and there was four inches of clearance, and if they didn’t want to be scraped off like fried eggs, they should get down. They waited between two cars until they cleared the tunnel, then went back up.
For me, I’d say the tailboard of a fire truck on the way to a fire. I sort of locked my arms around the bar that runs across the back of the truck and dozed off, in spite of the sirens and flashing red lights. I woke up when we got to the fire, of course. The strangest place for sleeping all night was probably the fire escape of an office building in Tokyo, in the rain. I had lost my apartment key, and had to wait for the building to open the next morning to get a new one.
I went hitchhiking when I was 21, round america for about 6 motnhs. Strangest places I slept:
Under a bridge on I-10 in Florida.
In a big box behind a supermarket in Louisiana.
In the bed of a pickup truck driving from Georigia to North Carolina.
Under the deck of a bar in Virginia.
At a telephone switchboard at work.
At a rifle range with 22 calibar rifles going off.
My college biology class ( the weird thing is I kept taking notes. they made no sence)
Next to the Southwest Corridor Bikepath near the Jackson Square T station. I was biking home drunk, veered into the grass, fell on my hand, decided that it hurt too much to continue, and, in one of those thoughts that makes sense at the time, decided to take a nap on the grass right there.
Woke up a bit later and finished the ride home.
On a table in the dining room of my fraternity house. Also on a bench in the same room. Also under a desk in a closet there.
On a stool in front of the lathe in my college’s machine shop. Hey, the class was at 8AM, so I’d doze off while my partner was using the lathe.
i know this sounds cheesy-- i feel asleep on a pool table at a bar once. it was late, my sister in law was trying to get on the bartender. we were the only ones there, so i laid on the pool table so i could rest. they woke me up after they had cleaned up for the night
On the floor of my parent’s garage. I was being made to clean the garage, as punishment for coming home drunk, I was 17. I was told if I didn’t finish it that day , I would have to finish it the next day.
In the back of a 66 Pontiac Catalina, parked in my parent’s driveway. It was more comfortable than the garage floor.
A field behind my friend’s house. It was a graduation party gone bad.
These are the reasons why I no longer drink Jack Daniels.
When I shared a room with my brother, I was pissed because he let his girlfriend sleep in his bed one night, and I really didn’t want her in there naked when I was in my bed naked. Anyway, in protest I went out into our backyard and slept on the trampoline.
I thought it would be comfortable, but much condensation builds up on trampolines in the night. I was soaking wet, cold, sore, and sick in the morning. No one noticed I slept on the trampoline except for a houseguest we had at the time. So much for my protest. We shared a good laugh about it, though, once I became well again.
On a dare, I slept in the overhead storage compartment above a closet every night for a couple weeks. It was about the size of a coffin, and so tight that I couldn’t turn over to sleep on my other side without getting out and getting back in again.
When riding to work on public transportation, I had my naps timed exactly so that I never missed my stop.
While visiting my mother and sister who were staying at a motel in Washington DC for the national spelling contest (I hitchhiked to be there) I slept in the closet overnight since I wasn’t really supposed to be there.
cmkeller, I get the reference, but you have me seriously worried.
Oddest place: when I used to work construction, I once slept atop a pile of bricks which were in a wheelbarrow on the back of an open truck. This was in the morning, about 6 am, on the way to a construction site. It started to rain so I wrapped a plastic drop cloth around myself to keep dry. Slept like a baby.
Nowadays I complain if the mattress isn’t just right. Ah, to be 18 and stoopid again.
When I was homeless in New York City, I slept a lot in Central Park, in the New York Public Library, and in churches. Now I sleep on the floor of my own apartment, and consider it a step up in the world.
In the bomb bay of a Vulcan bomber, wedged between the forward bomb bay fuel tank and the bulkhead. I was woken by the pain of dripping solder burning through my overalls onto my thigh.
I, along with my twin brother, fell asleep on the floor of the back seat of a 1962 Corvair convertible sometime in the early sixties (so I’m told). My parents had placed us (asleep already) on the seat and we must have rolled off onto the floor during a stop. We were such quiet kids that apparently we took it all in stride with no crying at all. Upon looking back to check on us and not seeing us, they at first assumed we had been snatched without them realizing it. Go easy on them though. This was way before the advent of car seats, and they were very young.
On the floor of a greyhound bus, my head under one seat, my feet across the aisle under another. This was on a high school band trip to Rapid City SD (hellooooo Wall Drug!) though one of the other guys who was smaller did sleep in the overhead luggage rack.
On the floor of an old school bus on the farm of a couple I didn’t know but a friend did who was in the SCA with them.
At a mexican restaurant while visiting some friends after pulling an all nighter with an old girlfriend.
In college freshman history (8:00 A. M.) with my forehead in one hand and holding a pencil poised over a page in the other so I could simulate taking notes.
Oh, once when a college senior I fell asleep in an armchair I used to have, with my typewriter on my lap. I actually completed a sentence after dozing off and it still made sense!
