Luke Sleepwalker

When I was a kid, I used to sleepwalk.  Like a champ.  Out the door, down the stairs, through the hall, round the kitchen, down another hall and wind up waking up in the room with my parents watching Nick at Nite, wondering why my dad was going on about witches and talking horses.  Kind of weird stuff.

Maybe I’m up to my old tricks?

It is my custom to hang my purse off the deadbolt on the door, to make sure I don’t forget to take it with me to work.  I know.  I’d forget my own head, all that. 

Sunday morning I woke up to find my purse on the floor, in a shambles.  I wondered, could it have broken?  Fallen off?

Then it started to come back to me:

Waking up in the middle of the night, feeling the need to escape.  Making my way to the door, trying the locks.  Throwing my purse out of the way, I found I still lacked the strength to unlock the door, gave up, and returned to bed.

This terrified me:  what if I had actually been able to get out into the hall?  If the door had shut behind me, would I have been able to open it again?  It’s a little tricky.  Moreover, what if I had made it to the stairs?  Would I have fallen, or made it all the way down to the building door?  Onto the street?  In the middle of the night, with no keys, no phone, no MetroCard?  I shudder to think.

Fellow sleepwalkers, do you have these problems?  How do you keep yourself safe?  Outside of zipping yourself into a sleeping bag wearing mittens taped to your hands???