Authors: Karen Slavick-Lennard
Sleep Talkin' Man (15 page)
As you have perhaps gathered by now, these particular paramedics may have not been the sharpest tools in the shed. It took them five tries to realize that they would not be able to load Adam on his seven-foot board horizontally through the door into the five-by-five elevator. One of them suggested that perhaps they should stand him up. Ah, a solution! Except that they fed him in feet-first. Thankfully, he did not fit that way either, which saved him from riding
down upside-down. It was decided that what was needed was a fire crew to hoist Adam out the window and down two floors, to the ambulance waiting below.
Remember, these offices were in Russell Square, a prestigious and bustling area of London. In order to get a fire engine into the square, it was necessary for the police to completely shut it down to all other traffic.
So, there’s Adam, prone, strapped to a backboard with neck brace, his suited body drenched in sweat, his back searing in white hot pain, his bladder fit to burst at any moment, and now the cause of a complete shutdown of Russell Square. His embarrassment was at its breaking point, and as Adam lay there begging the floor to open up and swallow him, into his frame of vision loomed the faces of the four paramedics, now joined by two police officers, and—yes ladies—SEVEN firemen. It could have been the perfect cast for a bachelorette party. But instead, this was Adam’s first day at his new job and, now, one of the worst days in his life. And it wasn’t over yet. He still had to endure the ignominy of the journey
down the fireman’s ladder from the third-floor window into the closed-off square below.
Thus began, and ended, Adam’s illustrious career in public relations.
10
“I’m gonna fucking tear you limb from limb, and use your arm like a loofa and your face to clean my crack and balls. Now just go away.”
9
“That’s the green one taken care of. Bring me the blue and I’ll kick seven shades of shit out of it.”
8
“You give me stress, anxiety, days filled with woe. I give you, I don’t know, a kick in the fucking balls. I think that kind of makes it fair. Asshole.”
7
“You take one of those knitting needles and put ’em in my neck once more, I’m gonna see to it that every time you blink, you’re gonna be looking at your own rectum. Got it?”
6
“That’s it. I’m going to have to call an intervention on your stupidness. I think it will take the form of a brick.”
5 “Pee in my bed once, shame on you. Pee in my bed twice, I’m gonna rip out your bladder and use it as a football, you geriatric incontinent cock slap.”
4
“I think it’s time you stepped into my office. The office of my fist.”
3
“You try feeding me any processed soya, you’re going to find it very hard to wipe your ass without any fucking arms.”
2
“If you don’t shut your cake hole, I’m gonna put you into a food coma.”
1
“This is a friendly rock. Let me rub it on your face lightly. Yeah. Now it’s got your scent, it’ll like you. Let me show you: Stand there, and I’m gonna throw the rock at you. Watch how it wants to connect with you, time and again.”
Believe it or not, Adam was not my first experience with wacky sleep behaviors. My brother Jason is and always has been a sleepwalker and talker! One night, when he was about eleven, my mother heard a commotion coming from downstairs in the middle of the night. When she crept down the stairs, she discovered my brother kicking and yelling at the vacuum cleaner, which he’d dragged out of the closet. He nearly broke his toe! But think of the bravery, risking that precious digit to protect our family.
On another occasion, my mother heard yelling coming from my brother’s room. She ran across the hall and threw the door open, only to find him using his left hand to bend his right hand back with such force that he was near to breaking his wrist. It turns out that he had rolled over on his right arm, and that hand had fallen asleep. Meanwhile, his left hand was feeling around, and came across a foreign hand (the right, numb one). Believing the dead hand to be a monster, he attacked!
About a year ago, Jason started having a recurring sleepwalking episode in which he believes
there is someone outside the door of his house. He gets out of bed and creeps through his apartment, with the intention of sneaking up and throwing open the front door to surprise the uninvited guest. He’s gotten further and further each time, most recently finding himself with his hand on the knob of the front door. He’s very concerned that the most likely next step is his actually flinging the door open and leaping onto his front porch clad only in his boxer shorts.
There was one fateful night that Jason’s roommate Jacob stumbled home at two a.m. from a night out drinking. He let himself in the front door, and made his weaving way down the hall toward his own room. Unfortunately, he was passing by my brother’s room at the very moment that Jason, mid-sleepwalk, yanked his door open. Jason, for the first time actually finding the suspected stranger looming at the door, screamed at the top of his lungs, causing poor drunk Jacob to pitch in with with his own scream of terror. Jason slammed the door in Jacob’s face, and screamed again. With this scream, Jason actually woke himself up, and gradually
made sense of what had happened. Doubled over with his hands on his knees, heart pounding, he opened his door again to find Jacob, near to hyperventilating, propping himself up on the other side. Both gasped and wheezed for a while, trying to calm down, until Jason said, “Don’t … ever … do … that … again.”
I just don’t like those German shepherds and their achtung sheep.
I’m the epitome of seeing is believing.
Once you see me, you’ll believe there is a god.
Duh. They’re deaf.
They can’t hear me.
YOU’RE ALL CUNTS!
Life is precious.
I’m not going to just sit here listening to your pathetic fucking dribble.
I’ve got a badger, a dog, a cat, and a sack.
Now that I’ve got ‘em you can fuck off.
All mine.
Hey! This is MY playground. These are MY swings. That’s MY climbing pyramid.
And that’s MY springy elephant!
THAT’S MY SPRINGY ELEPHANT!
You crusty knob-end. Bog off! Leave this playground to the king of playtime! … Mmmm, they’re all mine …. I need a push.
I can’t swing without a push. PUSH ME!
Where is everyone? … Bastards.
This is MY playground.
I’ve never seen a baby pigeon.
It doesn’t make sense.
Buffalo wings? Are you insane?
Those cows can’t fly. It’s a lie, I tell you. A fucking lie.
I think you should sit down.
Surely your ankles can’t take the weight.
I understand, but things have changed now.
Ever since the Chocolate Bonanza.
Shhhhh! Why can’t you midgets talk more fucking quietly?! I hate small talk.
Just the thought of kissing you makes me want to take a vegetable peeler to my lips.
I’m bored.
Let’s go and trip some old people.
I’m sorry, I tried. But liking you is just too far outside my comfort zone.
Why aren’t you making me warm, hmm?
Hmm? Why aren’t you making me warm?
That’s your one fucking job, to make me warm, why the fuck are you not doing your job? … Being dead is no fucking excuse, you make me fucking warm!
Between die-you-cancer-upon-my-life and I-couldn’t-really-give-a-crap-about-you lies your life story.
Beer is from Mars.
Chocolate’s from Venus.
I’m giving out tickets.
Five minute slots to stand next to me.
One at a time. Enjoy yourself.
Why don’t you stop looking for answers when your questions have as much weight as a turd floating out to sea.
I’m talkin’ about motherfucking cookies and apple juice.
I need you to take this stapler and ram it into your forehead. No, it won’t solve the problem, but it will make me happier.
It’s funny! Now go bleed somewhere else.
Sure you can sit next to me.
But you’re going to have to be prepared to be eaten if we crash.
There’s a reason you’re such an asshole.
You just don’t have to keep telling everybody about it. People will work it out for themselves pretty quickly.
Oh, it’s time I got a tail. Yeah, a real strong one. No, not for climbing, so I can wrap it around your neck and squeeze the living shit out of you. Maybe then I’ll go climbing.
No pens. There are no pens here.
I can’t do any work anymore.
I’m in crayon heaven.
It’s science.
It’s meant to confuse stupid people.
Scales. Must have scales. And razor claws.
I want some feathers. And a goggly thing on its head. Yeahhh. Dinochicken.
Awesome! I feel like a god. All right, what’s next? Guineapigasaurus. Bring it on!
I wanna put a dog in charge.
They don’t start wars. They just want love.
And to sniff bums. Yeah, sniff bums.
Sniff.
Squid wrestling:
all tentacles and no substance.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve received a number of fretful e-mails and comments from readers suggesting that perhaps Adam has a serious psychological disturbance, and that his sleep talking is the foreshadowing of an inevitable future display of shock and awe. These communications invariably conclude with a plea for us to get him to a doctor. For those that share this view, I hope I can put your minds at ease: we’ve been put in front of a number of sleep specialists (an unintended consequence of the media attention the blog received), and we’ve learned that what Adam does is not so uncommon, nor is Adam a particularly extreme example of sleep behavior. Though he does seem to be especially prolific and clever, there are loads of others out there.
But for those of you who are still sceptical of Adam’s mental stability, or those who, like me, are simply curious about the science here, I’ve invited psychiatrist and sleep specialist Hugh Selsick to tell us what this sleep talking thing is all about. Hugh, take it away!
A Word from our Friendly Neighborhood
Sleep Specialist
Sleep talking, or to give it its scientific name, somniloquy, is something of an enigma in the already enigmatic world of sleep disorders. Given the huge response that Sleep Talkin’ Man generated when it went viral on the Web, you would imagine there would be similar enthusiasm for the topic among sleep experts. But, oddly, that’s not the case. Some sleep textbooks don’t mention sleep talking at all. Kryger’s
Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine
is a hefty tome found on the desks of most sleep doctors and researchers around the world. It weighs in at 1,552 pages and yet sleep talking only manages to command a paltry thirty-six lines (scattered across five different chapters) and a couple of passing mentions. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been a fair bit of research into the field, but we know very little more about it now than we did thirty years ago. Perhaps this is because it is common, and is seen more as a source of amusement or mild annoyance than as a serious problem. Indeed, there seems to be growing doubt in the sleep science community about whether to consider it a disorder at all, as evidenced by its status in The International Classification of Sleep Disorders. In the first edition, sleep talking made the grade as a disorder and was
listed under “Sleep Wake Transition Disorders.” But by the time the second edition came out people weren’t so sure. It has now been relegated to “Isolated Symptoms, Apparently Normal Variants and Unresolved Issues.”
So what is sleep talking, what causes it, and what does Sleep Talkin’ Man tell us about Adam’s unconscious? To really get to grips with this we need to take a closer look at sleep.
For thousands of years we assumed that sleep was a single thing. You were either awake or asleep. But with the invention of the EEG we discovered that sleep was much more complicated and researchers have spent the last sixty years trying to understand what is really going on, with only partial success.
Sleep is actually made up of several different types of sleep, or sleep stages, which alternate through the night in ninety-minute cycles. Stage One sleep is very light sleep and is usually a brief transitional stage we pass through between being awake and being “properly” asleep. That twilight, half-asleep, half-awake sensation you get just as you’re drifting off to sleep is probably a sign that you are in Stage One sleep.