“How to make your wife cry” or “Why sleepwalking isn’t cute anymore”

So I’m a sleepwalker. Anyone who has lived with me over the thirty-two years God has blessed me with on this earth knows this. Sleepwalking is a strange sort of thing. The way I look at it there are a couple of different kinds of sleepwalking. (I’m no doctor of sleep, nor have I ever spoken to one, so I have no idea if official classifications of sleepwalking exist…nor do I care. While I have paused in my narrative let me continue with this aside. Please, do not start sending me magazine articles on sleepwalking, or the name of a good doctor…or anything like that. I have sleepwalked for thirty-two years and by and large the only thing it has done is create funny stories people tell about me. I remember in College when my Grandma Swenson first found out. I started getting letters in the mail that would just be some newspaper clipping, or some magazine clipping on sleepwalking. Eventually you just shake your head, smile and say… “Grandma, Grandma, Grandma” Which is actually harder to say then you would think it would be. Try it…I’ll wait. Course, while we’re way off topic, I also remember in college when Steve Gadlin thought it would be funny to sign my name up for a free information packet on bedwetting and what to do about it. Truth be told…it was pretty funny. I forget how I retaliated but all this is another story)
As I was saying, before I so rudely interrupted myself. I am a sleepwalker. There are a few different forms I notice. There is the version where I have no idea I did it at all and someone (like my wife now, or my parents when I was a kid) will tell me the next day of the silly things I was doing the night before. Then there is the version where I wake up at the end of it and see people’s face laughing, or confused and asking if I’m asleep. Then there is the third version. This is my least favorite, and happens the most infrequently. This is the version where I’m sort of awake and sort of asleep. In this version I am aware enough so that I will remember everything in the morning, but am asleep enough so that I am entirely living in my dream world. So for example: One of the classic versions of this that has happened a couple of times in my life is that I am dreaming that I am teaching a class (could be anything from reading class, to science, to catechism, etc) and I become aware that I am in my pajamas and that I am lying down, but when I look around I still think the students are there. I get really embarrassed, because I’m in my pajamas, and start trying to inconspicuously put some clothes on over my pajamas. Like I said, this tends to be my least favorite. I much prefer just waking up sitting on the couch and thinking…huh, what am I doing here, or hearing from my wife in the morning, “you were sleepwalking again last night, you…”
I don’t know what causes a person to do this. I’ve noticed that it is more likely to happen when life is stressful, but it doesn’t always happen during stressful periods and it often will happen when there is next to no stress in my life at all. All that said I’ve been sleepwalking lately and I can pretty much guarantee you it is some part of my body’s way of handling stress, and I can also guarantee you it has lost any charm it may have held for my wife. Every night since we got home from the hospital I’ve been sleepwalking. I’ve done all three of these versions. And every night it comes down to the same thing, I’m looking for the babies, and I’m upset when I can’t find them.

Sorry, no pictures this post, and honestly, I'm glad there aren't any pictures of me sleepwalking floating around out there...at least none that I know of.