I am not a sleepwalker. I have never been one to get up in the middle of the night while I was not awake. The closest I ever came to sleepwalking was one evening when I was still in elementary school. I woke up and found myself sitting up in the bed. I wasn’t dreaming about getting up or sitting up. I don’t remember that I was dreaming about anything at all. I briefly considered what was going on and decided to aggressively fall back onto my pillow.
In my hometown of Alamo, Tennessee, there is an exotic animal park. When I was growing up, one of the local farmers had several buffalo. These were a rare sight in West Tennessee. The farm where they were located was on a major highway near town. They were always something to keep an eye out for when travelling down this highway. Over the years, he added more different animals to his collection and later opened a drive thru park that has become a tourist attraction for the area.
When I was around 3 and 4 years old, there weren’t very many kids my age in the neighborhood that I could play with without crossing the street. When I would go outside and play, I had imaginary friends that I told my parents that I was playing with. Johnny and Gina were their names. My parents have told me that there was another friend that I talked about named Pokel. I don’t remember Pokel, but I suspect that he was some sort of horse character like Pokey on the Gumby show. I think the only time that Pokel made an appearance in my play was probably once when I had watched Gumby. When my parents would ask me who I was playing with, I would respond, “My imaginary playmates, Johnny and Gina.”
Several years ago when my kids were younger, we got one of those inflatable pools. Our kids wanted to swim and we didn’t have a regular place for them to go that was very close to our house. This pool was perfect for us for a season. Our whole family used it regularly.
I have a friend that went big game hunting in Wyoming several years ago. When he got back from his trip, he invited us over for a meal where we got to sample some meat from animals that we don’t usually find in West Tennessee except maybe at the zoo. During the meal, he told us a story from his trip.
While his days were filled with hunting, he and his hunting companions were looking for a little something to do at night. They went down to the desk of the place they were staying and asked if there was anything to do in town that night. The desk clerk asked if they had ever been to a chicken roping contest. They replied that they had never even heard of chicken roping. The clerk told them that the state championship was taking place in town that night. Of course they had to go.
You might know that I majored in Chemistry in college and that a man named Mr. Pechonick was one of my favorite instructors. I have talked about him in a previous post. During my sophomore year, I had him for another class. During one of the labs, we did an experiment where we melted moth balls and measured the temperature as they returned to a solid state. Moth balls are made of a compound called Naphthalene. During this lab, we all worked on our own, but we ended up talking to each other throughout the class trying to figure out what to do where Mr. Pechonick might not have given us very much guidance.
Here is the short version of the story: The only time I ever got a spanking in school was in second grade for talking during sleeping period. Now the long version.
One evening before my wife and I were married, we had been out on a date. We had been out to see a movie. When we I took her home, her family was not there. This particular night, she had not brought any keys with her and we were locked out of the house. This was long before cell phones so we didn’t have any
good way to contact anyone to see where they were. Her grandmother lived next door so we could go and check with her. It was late enough that evening that we knew her grandmother would already be in bed.
Several years ago, before my wife and I had children, a couple that we knew invited us and several other couples for an evening of games. This group of couples had gathered before for game night. Bunko was the game of choice on previous nights. One night the game of choice was Taboo. Taboo is a good game for larger groups of people. The play is simple. You divide into two teams. We played women against men. One person from a team draws cards with a word at the top they will try to get their teammates to say. There are other words at the bottom of the card that they cannot use as clues. For example, if the word was “Baseball”, you might not be able to use “sport,” “game,” “pastime,” “hitter” or “pitcher” as clues. A player from the other team watches the cards and presses a buzzer if the person giving the clues says one of the “taboo” words. There is a time limit for each player. The teams take turns and each player on each team takes a turn giving clues. Much of the fun of the game comes when a player is feeling the pressure of the time limit. Add to that if they ever say a taboo word, the buzzer seems to shake them up even more.
My wife and I lived in an apartment when we were first married. I had graduated college and she was in her last year. I had graduated from a school in another town and a good friend named Mike that I had gone to school with was in one of my wife’s classes. Mike was living with his parents while he was going back to school so he would occasionally stop by our place and hang out. I had just gotten home from work one afternoon when he stopped by. My wife wasn’t at home and I told Mike he could watch TV while I was getting cleaned up.