Car trouble - Blogging for Books

Here's my entry in the February Blogging for Books contest. Jay says we have to write something about a dream we had - either waking or sleeping.

As a kid, I was a sleep walker. I also talked in my sleep. A lot. According to my parents and my bunk mates from summer camp, I was capable of having whole conversations, although none of them made much sense. I never remembered any of it when I woke up which, I guess, is par for the course.

I don’t do much sleep walking anymore but there are times when I wake up standing next to my bed wondering what exactly I’m doing standing next to my bed. Sometimes I wake up thinking I need a glass of orange juice even though I rarely drink the stuff (and we don’t even have any in the house). More often I have dreams that a spider is swinging down towards me from the ceiling above my bed and I wake up swatting at it. That used to freak me out but now I’m able talk myself out of an imaginary spider-induced panic. Most of the time.

As annoying as they are, these night wakings don’t usually hurt anyone. But a few years ago I had a dream that there was a shelf above our bed. On that shelf was a toy car – a big one that a child can ride in. Suddenly the shelf tilted and the car started sliding down and was going to land on my husband. Being the good wife that I am, I tried to protect him. I’m sure he would have appreciated my heroics if he hadn’t been sound asleep and if I hadn’t punched him in the nuts in the process. Lucky for me, he’s still willing to sleep in the same bed.