After sharing some of the legendary nighttime excursions of my sleepwalking sister Jan in my last post, it’s only fair that I reveal how the rest of us—myself included—contributed to our family’s unintentional late-night comedy troupe.
Growing up as the youngest of three girls, I had a front-row seat to my sisters’ successes, their mistakes, and their impeccable comedic timing. While many of our funniest scenes happened while we were wide awake, the real “feature film” was the comedy that unfolded while we were fast asleep.
With only three years separating us (Jackie, Jan, and me), we were incredibly close—a bond usually reinforced by the board games we received every Christmas. But that closeness also meant living in close quarters. This continued in college when Jackie was a senior and Jan and I were freshmen. To save money, our parents moved us into a two-bedroom apartment near the university.
Jackie spent many frustrating nights listening to Jan and me talking in our shared bedroom. Being the oldest, she would eventually march in to chastise us for keeping her awake—only to find us both sound asleep, mid-conversation! Neither of us ever recalled these chats, and Jackie’s frustration usually dissolved into laughter at the absurdity of our nonsensical grunts and mumbles being a dialogue.
However, Jackie was not immune to the family’s nighttime antics. I’ll never forget the night she came rushing into our room, crying out in concern for our grandmother. In her sleep-induced haste, she tripped and landed hard on both knees. If you can believe it, the impact didn’t even wake her! The next morning, she complained that her knees were mysteriously sore. When we explained the midnight tumble, she didn’t believe us at first, which—of course—only made us laugh harder.
As for me? I suppose I had my own “starring role” in a sleepwalking incident.
Rewind to junior high: Jan awoke to find me aggressively rearranging items on her dresser. When she asked what I was doing with her things, I turned to her and, in a remarkably irate voice, snapped: “I can’t find my novel!”
Once she realized I was sleepwalking and finally stopped laughing, she promised we’d look for it in the morning. As is typical with a sleepwalker, I had no recollection of the literary crisis.
All these years later, and as far as I know, Jan never walked outside in her sleep again, and Jackie hasn’t reported any more sleepwalking episodes since college.
As for me, I stay in bed but still talk in my sleep. My monologues are rarely comprehensible (from what I’ve been told) and usually tied to a dream, but maybe, just maybe, sometimes I’m still expressing a deep-seated concern that I never did find that novel.
Jean's Movies 