sleep scratching
I cut my fingernails every night before I sleep, because I think that I’ll fall asleep on my hands and my nails will grow into my face, leaving hideous scars.
tiny memory packages
If I need to remember something while I’m trying to sleep, I’ll say it into my hand and pretend to pack it into my ear so it’ll be in my brain when I wake up.
can't bite through stuffed animals
As a child I was terrified that vampires were going to get me so I would either sleep with stuffed animals around my neck…or in the bathtub so I could see all around me.
3am snack
I wake up every night at 3 am, give or take a few minutes. I go into the kitchen and eat something sweet, washed down by milk straight from the gallon. I then go back to sleep. I’ve been doing this for 21 years.
keeping an eye out for my parents
when I was little I used to have to sleep with the open part of my pillow facing the direction my parents were in the house. Otherwise, I thought they would die. Even if I was at a friend’s house, I would face the pillow in the direction towards my house.
6th sense
I 100% can NOT sleep if the “fitted” sheet on my mattress comes off during the night. Some how in the middle of my sleep I know when it does, and wake up to fix it.
bedtime stabbing
I can’t sleep unless my back is covered. Even in the summer. The rest of me, okay. Leave it bare. But, I’m always scared that someone is going to come in and stab me. Because the sheet that is on me will make me SO MUCH less susceptible to knife wounds.
uneven sleeping
When I sleep, my body can’t be level. I generally prop one leg up on something, like the back of a couch, and put my arms above my head on the pillow. For this reason, I find it much easier to sleep on couches than beds.
don't breathe on me
I can’t face the same way as my spouse at night. His breathing on me can interfere with my sleep and suffocate me.
untagged
Whenever I am on a bed (mine or someone elses), tags cannot be near me. Whether its from a pillow or a blanket, I cannot think or move until it is as far away from me as possible. Pillows with tags end up on the floor, tags of covered pillows have to be on the inside of the case, and blanket tags either have to be cut off or on the bottom of the bed, farthest from my feet.
bed wetting
every time i pee, i have to pinch myself to make sure i’m not dreaming, as i’m afraid i’m actually about to wet the bed.
eyes closed, lights out
I must close my eyes before I turn off the light when I go to sleep. I don’t like being in the dark, so doing this makes me unable to see that it is dark. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember.
jaws swims under your bedroom floor
I don’t know what my parents were thinking but they let me watch the movie Jaws when I was about 8 years old. Ever since then I’ve had an irrational fear of sharks. When I would lay in my bed at night, I couldn’t let any body part creep over the edge of the bed for fear that Jaws would come up out of the floor boards and eat my arm or something. Sometimes I imagined that my bed was actually floating in the ocean.
Forget about swimming too far out in the ocean. But I was on the swim team as a kid and we would train at the university indoor 50 meter pool. They had a window underwater that let you look into the boiler room and I thought that’s where they kept the sharks. When I would swim into the deep end, I would race until I got back into the shallow end because I really thought the shark was chasing me. I thought this until I was about 15.
parental reassurance
A couple of years ago, when my son was between the ages of 6 and 8, he used to worry about having a nightmare during the night. So every night, he would have myself or his father (his father was preferred) put him to bed, and we would have to say this phrase, “You are going to have good dreams tonight.” We had to say it just like that and not veer from the script or ad lib or anything else, or he would inform us that it wasn’t right and wouldn’t work. Somehow, later, we had to add in after that statement, “Tomorrow is going to be the greatest day.” But that came later in the ritual. We did this for about two years, and then he didn’t want us to say it to him anymore. Even though I went along with it, I secretly wondered if he was going to grow up to be the kind of person that needs to walk down the sidewalk without stepping on a crack, or stuff like that. I’m still watching and waiting.
aliens are weak
When I was young, I used to worry about alien abduction (because of all the tv shows describing such events). So every night when I would go to bed, I would stack large body pillows and blankets over me for protection. I reasoned that the aliens long, skinny, arms would be too weak to move all of the wrappings; effectively saving me from certain doom.
