I am not, nor have I ever been, a dainty sleeper. In fact, I frequently wake up in a puddle of my own drool.
For some reason something happens to my nasal passages when I lie down, which also makes me a nighttime mouth breather… which is unpleasant for the poor sod lying next to me … who will invariably shift his position to wake to a faceful of hot breath.
Sometimes I wake myself with a snort, but I don’t think I saw logs on a regular basis. When I was pregnant however, the matter of my snoring sent me into the guest bedroom.
I’ve always been like this, the kind of loud sleeper. It doesn’t bother me very much nowadays. My husband has sworn to keep me, thus has no choice but to put up with it. But in grades four or five – the height of the elementary-school sleepover and not coincidentally, the beginnings of self awareness and all that awful stuff – was a tough time. It was particularly mortifying to fall asleep with my head back and my mouth hanging open. In grade 8 or 9 we went on an overnight school trip to a chalet in Quebec in a teeny town called St. Donat. For some reason our mixed group slept in the same room. In the morning a classmate of mine (a fellow I really liked) pointed to my bunk and loudly announced that SOMEONE OVER THERE SURE WAS A LOUD SLEEPER! I did the only think I could do… I looked around and blamed someone else.
Oh, how I wished I could be like Sleeping Beauty and just lie there, looking rosy and peaceful, gently sighing in my sleep as lovely visions danced in my resting brain – no drool, no leg jimmies, no shouting or snorting.
In my first year of university I lived in residence. That meant a roommate. For her sake I adopted the habit of sleeping with a pillow over my head. I insisted I slept better that way, but the reality of the situation was that I hoped it would muffle the sounds coming out of me.
It was also during this time that sleepovers with the opposite sex became more common and a lot less innocent. My strategy was two-fold. I tried my darndest to (a) be the last to fall asleep and (b) think glamorous thoughts and clamp my mouth shut before nodding off. (In the morning I would also wake early to brush my hair and teeth. Hey! I wake up looking gorgeous because I AM GORGEOUS All The Time! Ha. Yeah.)
I am pretty sure my sleeping strategies didn’t work, although no one told me otherwise. I’m sure that all those boys were so smitten they would never dare tell me the truth.
