When I was growing up, I slept in a twin bed. This is the same bed I talked about in a previous post where I talk about not being a sleepwalker. This bed had 4 slats under the boxed springs. One of these slats didn’t fit that well and would occasionally fall out when I was moving in the bed. The boxed springs didn’t shift. The provided no real purpose other than to make a very loud noise when it hit the tile floor in my room.
One night, I had a hard time falling asleep. It was a school night and I would never stay at home unless I was really sick. I didn’t feel that bad other than the fact that I knew I needed to go to sleep and I was tired. As I laid in the bed, I convinced myself that I had a bit of a headache and that taking something for it would help me fall asleep. My bedroom was at one end of the hall and the kitchen where we kept the aspirin was at the other end of the hall. I would have to pass by my sister’s room on the left and my parents’ room on the right before I reached the kitchen. When I sat up on the edge of the bed, the slat fell out and hit the floor. When it hit, it scared me. When it scared me, I jumped up. When I jumped up, I screamed. And when I screamed, I started running down the hall.
From this point on, my memory plays this event in slow motion. As I ran past the door of my sister’s room, I could hear her rolling over in the bed. As I approached my parents’ room, I heard my mother begin screaming. Next, I heard what I correctly assumed to be my father scrambling to get out of the bed. The way their bed was positioned in their room, my mother’s side of the bed was closest to the door to the hall. My father leapt over my mother and ran into the hall. I ran into him and immediately said, “The slat fell out from my bed!” He grabbed me and shoved me into my mother who was right behind him still in the bedroom. When I bumped into her she was hysterically shouting “What happened?”
I don’t remember if I got any aspirin but I did finally fall asleep after my heart stopped racing.