It is common knowledge among my friends that I am a tiny bit narcoleptic. This isn’t to say that I will be walking down the street, and be in full out REM mid stride, but rather I may start a sentence and you will have to wait until I wake up to hear the end of it. This comes from the fact that I live my life balls out. I work hard, I play hard, and I usually jam pack my schedule with so much stuff to get done that high doses of crack or meth couldn’t give me enough energy to get it all accomplished. Maybe it isn’t narcolepsy so much as just sheer exhaustion-whatever you want to call it I go quite often until I drop. I fall asleep working so often that I have become accustomed to deleting full pages of one continuous letter from documents. Three pages of the letter "a" looks completely unprofessional. This brings up a few interesting “side effects” to life. The first is that I won’t go to sleep around people that I don’t trust. That is just foolishness. How people sleep on planes when they travel alone is beyond my comprehension. We will cover that later. The second is that I don’t realize I am falling asleep or what has gone on around me until someone tells me after I have woken up. That isn’t the most comfortable feeling, and why I place a large emphasis on that first sleeping condition. The third and last is that I LOVE to travel, which is why I mentioned the plane issues previously. This post isn’t really about one incident in particular, but rather a collection of moments standing on that corner of life making memories.
I was in college, I was studying for a career in the medical field and carrying 21 hours of class, I had 12 clinic hours a week, I worked part-time ranging 24-32 hours a week, and I usually keep a pretty full social calendar. My entire life I have been living this way, but it was at this time that my friends decided I had narcoleptic tendencies. I had been in clinic that morning, class in the afternoon, worked after school, and needed to study for a big test the next day. The guy I was dating at the time had asked me to come over to his mother’s house that evening to hang out after I had gotten off of work- which I did. I took my books and was fully prepared to be extra studious. His mother gave me something to eat and brewed me a pot of coffee because she knew I was tired, but that I had to study…which was incredibly thoughtful of her. We sat in the office, she was watching TV, he was on the computer, and I had nested myself on the end of the couch with my books and paper preparing for a full on study session. We chatted here and there as I drank my coffee, and I quoted things I was studying about the human body. It was shaping up to be a productive evening, and they were both night owls, so I knew I wasn’t keeping them awake. Here is where it gets tricky. I am not naturally a night owl type of person, but I believe at this time I had been up for close to two days…which wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. I didn’t even feel it coming, but as I was told later, I began talking about something interesting I had read and was setting my coffee cup on the bookcase beside me, and in mid-sentence as soon as the cup was resting on the shelf I was out. I have no recollection of the event, only to be woken up later by the guy to tell me to go to bed and everyone giggling that I didn’t last past one cup of coffee. At that point, they decided I had some type of issue.
Fast forward a few months, or maybe even a year. Same guy, but my duration of wakedom (yeah, I made it up, get over it) was right around 72 hours. We had dinner with friends and he was staying with me that night, but he forgot something at his office. He was driving home after dinner, but we had to stop on the way home and he was just going to run in and grab whatever it was while I waited in the car. The next thing I know is that he is getting back in the car, and it is close to 35 minutes later and he said, “I can’t believe that just happened, and I hope it didn’t scare you.” Let us pause right here for a moment. I had just caught a “cat nap” after being continuously awake for 3 days. Please understand I was not firing on all cylinders as soon as I was awakened. It took a couple minutes to sink in of where I was, who was talking to me, and then actually processing everything that just happened. When I put it all together I had been alone and asleep in a convertible next to train tracks in a otherwise sketchy part of town, and now this guy is telling me that he hopes I wasn’t scared. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?!?!?! (WTF for all non-phonetic alphabet speakers) Why should have I been scared, and if there was something to be scared of, why are you just now, 35 minutes later checking on me!?!?!?!? This really drives home the entire issue I have about falling asleep around people that I don’t trust- or apparently alone. To get the full picture we parked directly across from the front door of the office, which is precisely a two lane street width from the front door, and based of the information I received, I was asleep in the time it took him to walk from the car to the front door and open it. As the story was relayed to me (insert Mission Impossible theme music in your head now as you continue reading) this guy goes into his office…which is a security and fire alarm installation office, so you know they have some of their own product installed. He puts his key in the front door and hears the beeping on the security system. He now has 30 seconds to type in the code on the key pad…which is a 4 digit code…dun dun dun. Only he can’t remember it. I mentioned this was a security installation facility right? Sirens and horns of all sorts are blaring everywhere; the security company is calling him on the phone, it is auto dialing the police, and I am snoozin’ away a street width from the entire apocalyptic nightmare. He is telling the security people the code he has entered, but apparently he was giving them a 5 digit number instead of the 4 digit number. A few days previously, without his knowledge, the building had actually been broken into, so the police suspect the same type of thing going on. I can’t remember if the police actually showed up with sirens and lights, I want to say yes, but I wasn’t a witness to it all, but I do vaguely remember some sort of police interaction as it was told to me. I think they tried to call, but he was on the phone with the security people and they couldn’t get through, and the police station is just a few blocks from the office, so logically I believe they would showed up. The security company gets the sirens quiet, and he gets whatever he had left (after his mess it should have been the freakin’ holy grail he was after, but I think it was pasta salad from a holiday party), handles the police, and he comes back to the car, and I wake up when he opens the door. After he realizes that I was asleep- he is astounded that I slept through the entire thing and begins to laugh his ass off. As he proceeds to tell me how James Bond he is not, I immediately put a note in my head that I once again I must really watch where I fall asleep.
Since you fully understand the depth of which I can sleep when I take one of these “spells”, you can see why I don’t like falling asleep around people I don’t trust. In fact, the first time I spend the night with someone new…take that for what you will…I always make sure they fall asleep first. Not just asleep, but a good hard sound sleep. I actually prefer that there was alcohol involved in the evening so that I know I am not going to get axe murdered in my sleep. You may laugh, but I had a run in with an axe murdering cat one time…that is another post to come later. This becomes really a hindrance in my life because I travel so often. Previously I talked about my trip to Vegas for my 30th birthday (which rocked in all forms and fashions!!). We spent 5 days in Vegas, if you have ever been to Vegas, then you know we slept for maybe an entire 8 hours over the course of those 5 days. We were catching the red-eye back on Sunday night, and I went on call for the hospital on Monday morning at 8am. Yeah- I know- genius move on the planning. We are flying back 5 hours in the dark, post rock style life, and I have a necessity to have rest because I will be responsible for a whole lot of shit in roughly 9 hours. So I HAVE to sleep on the plane. To fight this fear of, hell I don’t really know what it is, Mindalou sat in the aisle seat, and was nice enough to let me go to sleep first on the plane so I felt “protected.” Really??? Like I didn’t know as soon as I was out she was passing out too, but in some kind of Freudian mind trick it worked and was able to sleep on the plane. We had a layover in Atlanta for an hour, and once again I caught a little snooze because she waited until I was out before she went to sleep. That is right, I actually slept in a public airport and I survived. Upon waking, all I could think was that was the damn dumbest shit I had ever done. There was a guy in a business suit staring at me while he was scarfing down a Cinnabon. Creepy! He probably carried an axe in his briefcase…and somehow he snuck it through security, in my mind that is what he used to slice his Cinnabon. He may have been staring because I was still covered in glitter, my make-up from the night we had left to catch the plane was smeared across my face, and I was wearing 4 inch heels, dress, and wrapped in a pea coat sleeping in the airport, but in my mind he was contriving ways to chop me into bits in one of the many public restrooms. I might have trust issues, but you can damn sure count on me never getting chopped into little bits!
Since most of these instances I have discovered my own form of Holy Water, it is called 5 Hour Energy. I love that stuff!!! I can’t do high caffeine drinks that mix berries and jet fuel or whatever it is, but 5 Hour Energy has become a staple in my pantry. If you mix it up with a Mountain Dew in there every few hours, and find somewhere safe to take a 20 minute power nap, you can go for days!! I recently pulled 47 hours on 2 of the 5 Hour Energies, 1 Mountain Dew, and a 20 minute power nap at my house, with the security system on, Louisville slugger by my bed, and a phone in my hand! I don’t take any chances even when I’m by myself.
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