COLUMN: It all starts with the twitching
As I was parking outside the Fieldhouse a couple evenings ago, all of a sudden I saw strange objects falling out of the sky. What looked like giant missiles and very large spacecrafts were flying overhead, but then they crashed to the ground somewhere on the horizon, probably in Tremonton.
While musing on the singularity of this scene, more strange things began to happen. Many more missiles were crashing to the earth and kept getting closer to my car and the Fieldhouse. Becoming rather disturbed, I quickly grabbed a few survival supply items from the trunk and ran into the gym, just as my car got smashed to smithereens by an unknown object the size of a house.
Confused at what to do next, I decided my only option to endure this terrifying ordeal was to seek some shelter, so when the building collapsed at least I could be found alive a few days later. After searching for what seemed like an eternity, I finally found refuge underneath a stairwell in a hidden passage. Just when things appeared to settle down all of a sudden … BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!
The alarm sounded and I woke up from this rather disturbing phantasm, disoriented and wondering why I wasn’t being probed by aliens. Then I hazily realized that my experience was just a dream and that everything would be all right – until I screamed at the loud crash in the kitchen. Nope, no aliens, just my roommate making peach cobbler.
Normally my dreams aren’t so vivid and frightening, and trust me, I left out a lot of detail in the anecdote I just shared. Besides I didn’t think you’d want to hear the part about the hundreds of rabid Muppet characters racing around the indoor track, ripping the flesh off anyone running in the opposite direction from what the giant arrow near the entrance dictates.
I guess I’m lucky my sleep patterns are relatively mild, because there are people with nighttime behavior that makes me grin from ear to ear. It all starts with the twitching.
Ever notice how when people are falling asleep their appendages start to spasm involuntarily? It’s best when the intensity of convulsion makes the subject wake up again. I’ve learned that this phenomenon is caused by myoclonic jerks which, according to my vast scientific knowledge, are really annoying people who poke you a lot when you are trying to fall asleep.
I don’t know what myoclonic means, but I’m assuming it derives from the American “my,” meaning “not yours;” and “clonic,” meaning “test-tube sheep.” Wow, who would have thought that those annoying twitches were caused by overly tactile, farmer-turned-geneticists with a bad attitude?
More fun emerges as people fall deeper into a slumber. Some sleepers begin to groan or moan like a wounded bovine stuck in a fence. I’ve wondered what causes these unpleasant vocalizations, and have just assumed that the victims must be dreaming about a giant hot fudge sundae. The confectionery delight, however, is a couple inches out of their reach and is quickly evaporating into a pool of nothingness.
Ummmmm … excuse me, I’m gonna make a quick trip to Cold Stone – BRB.
OK, much better.
Odd sleep habits are so much better when they are performed by people you know and of whom you often make fun, like my friends, Blaine and John. Only this time, twitching and moaning have overwhelmingly graduated to sleepwalking and talking.
Blaine likes to recount a time when he had a dream about directing traffic only to wake up and realize he really was directing traffic. Well, that is if you count his closet as a major metropolitan highway and hanging shirts and slacks as oncoming vehicles. I bet he’s really glad I’m printing this story, but just wait until I get to John.
John has the fortunate (for us) peculiarity of being unusually verbose in his sleep. Occasionally you can’t understand his mumbling, but he usually appears quite lucid and awake, insomuch that you can carry on a complete conversation with him. I’m not making this up; it has happened to me. Somehow he never recalls the episodes later.
I’ve been told that once in a while John even speaks Mandarin in his sleep. Now that is some talent, ladies. I’ll gladly give out the phone number of USU’s first multilingual sleeptalker!
The most fun comes when he divulges personal secrets in his sleep. Like the time he microwaved his underwear before bedtime because it felt “Oh, so warm!” My favorite though, was the time he gave a discourse on toe jam. It was great. I can’t wait until the next utterance surfaces, because, by golly, they’re fantastic.
Whew, all this writing makes me want to go and take a nap, but now I’m too scared to sleep. I don’t want to find out what those freaky Muppets will do next.
Garrett Wheeler is a graduate engineering student and rescinds his earlier plea to include naptime in the ECE curriculum, because dreaming about multivariable integral problems just isn’t right. The year is almost over, so send last-minute column ideas to wheel@cc.usu.edu.