As far as I know, I do not talk, walk or do anything other weird thing in my sleep. My sisters claim that I used to kick them when we had to share a bed, but that's about it.

For three years, however, I lived with my incredible roommate Jen, the Sleepwalker from Hell. For the first 4 months of that time, we shared a bedroom ... which is when it was most interesting. Oh, she would do the normal sleepwalking things such as wander aimlessly around the house until I steered her back to bed, or stare bright-eyed at me while I was telling her about my day. It was sometimes hard to tell she was asleep while she was nodding and "Mm-hmm"-ing in agreement. I usually had to test her with something like:

"So, you met with the president of Zimbabwe today?"

"Mm-hmm" she would answer.

For some unfortunate reason, one of her prime sleepwalking times was 6 a.m. Sunday. This would not have been a problem had she wandered around the house where I was not, but no, she was usually in my bedroom.


(One particularly hung-over, sleepy Sunday morning:)

Jen is standing up at my dresser with the top drawer open. She is pulling everything out in handfuls and dropping it on the ground.

"Jen! What are you doing?!" I yell, trying not to make my headache worse.

(In a slow, monotone voice:)

"Echoes of reggae comin through my bedroom wall
Havin a party up next door but i'm sittin here all alone
Two lovers in the bedroom and the other starts to shout
All i got is this blank stare and that don't carry no clout at all ..."

She continued to recite almost all of the words to Ruby Soho by Rancid, then turned quickly around, stuck her arms out like wings, jumped and landed face first on her bed ... never waking up once.

I got used to it after a while.

Hey, it was pretty entertaining to have to put up with her wandering into my room in the middle of the night and saying things like, "You need to stop taking a shower now." or, "Sherry's coming over, but we ran out of flour and can't finish making the pizza."

"Sure, Jen. Okay. Just go back to bed and we'll talk about it later."