Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

Sweet Dreams

by Sara Peterson-Davis

I don’t want to alarm anyone but there’s a family living under my house.

At least I thought there was when I jumped out of bed one night last week and ran for the kitchen.

I was asleep when I charged down the hallway all in a twist because I had forgotten to feed the mutant mole-people living under our utility room. I wasn’t sure why they lived there or why I was responsible for them, but that all seemed unimportant as I wondered what I had in the fridge that they might eat.

Now before anyone starts with the dream interpretations, I have a pretty good idea of what that one meant. It’s not the first time I’ve remembered I’d forgotten them. But I still don’t get the thundering herd of bunnies I have to shoo out of my room every so often or the people riding the escalator in my closet once or twice a month.

I’m not sure what the scientific term is for the kind my kind of sleepwalking. But I can tell you one thing, it’s annoying to anyone who has to sleep in the same house with me.

When we were first married I convinced my husband that we needed to get out of our house because something was coming. I’m not sure what that something was, but he was halfway to finding his car keys when he realized I was sound asleep even with my eyes wide open standing there in the doorway.

He thought it was funny until a few weeks later when I woke him up to point out the dozen or so cats that were sitting all over our bedroom.

“You’re doing that thing again! Wake up!”

As soon as he spoke the cats melted away. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

“I hate that! I really hate that!” he yelled.

Then there was the time I woke him up to point out the man standing in our closet and the people looking in our windows. Oh, and let’s not forget all those pesky raccoons.

I’ve heard that this sort of thing runs in families and I inherited this bit of genetic flotsam and jetsam from my Grandpa McAdams.

The story goes that one night he convinced my sleeping grandmother to get under the bed because a tornado was just outside the window. The next morning she woke up on the floor under the bed. Meanwhile, Grandpa was up in bed under the covers.

She was more than a little ticked when he asked, “What are you doing down there?”

Grandma chalked it up to stress. It was the Great Depression after all, and those did qualify as stressful times.

Whether it’s a stress reaction or just the workings of a hyperactive REM cycle, I have somehow learned to keep quiet when I see things in my sleep. (I learned the hard way that it’s difficult to get small children back to sleep once you’ve yelled, “Look! There are mice everywhere!”) So I try to chase my bunnies on tippy toe and stare down the nosy escalator riders that use my closet as a thoroughfare.

But there really isn’t a quiet, dignified way to run down the hallway in your pajamas and jerk open the refrigerator door to feed the starving mutant family living somewhere under your foundation.

Next time I remember I’ve forgotten my subterranean family, I think I’ll grab a couple of those dream cats sitting around the bedroom as I run out the door.

That should keep everybody busy for a while.

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