Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Let me be clear about something: I am adorable. Possibly even sexy, depending on the lighting and your prescription strength. But none of that matters because you absolutely, positively do not want to sleep with me.
And I don’t mean “sleep.”
I mean actual sleep. That’s where everything goes to hell in a handbasket woven from my own inadequacies. I am, without question, a terrible sleep partner.
The Ritual Begins
First, there’s the covers situation. You might think “getting under the covers” is a simple binary operation: under or not under. You would be wrong. There’s a precise geometry involved. The blanket must be tucked on my right side but loose on the left, the comforter positioned exactly 2.3 inches below my chin, and the sheet creating just enough air pocket to prevent spontaneous combustion but not so much that I feel like I’m sleeping in the Lincoln Tunnel.
This process takes approximately seventeen minutes.
Then comes the pillow. It must be punched, fluffed, rotated, re-punched, karate-chopped, and finally beaten into submission like it owes me money. Just as I achieve the perfect cloud-like density that cradles my head at the exact angle required to prevent morning neck-death, I feel it coming.
The Cough.
The Mucus Uprising
It starts innocently enough: ahem ahem. Just clearing the pipes, nothing to see here, folks. But I can feel it lurking in the back of my throat. That glob of phlegm is staging a hostile takeover of my respiratory system. The cough escalates. It becomes more insistent. More violent. I try to muffle it into the pillow, pressing my face into the cottony abyss, but then it erupts:
CRAARRRFFFRAAAHLAH!
This sonic assault is often accompanied by what the Germans would call überraschungsfurz. The surprise fart. An involuntary biological exclamation point to my nocturnal symphony.
I immediately commence Operation Dutch Oven Prevention, rustling the covers like I’m trying to create a miniature weather system. Because nothing says “romance” like crop-dusting your spouse while she’s trying to achieve REM sleep.
The Leg Pillow Situation
Ah, but we’re not done. Enter: The Leg Pillow.
This architectural marvel must be positioned with the precision of a NASA landing sequence. Between the knees, supporting the upper leg at exactly the right angle to prevent my skeleton from feeling like it’s been assembled by a drunk person following IKEA instructions. Moving it to achieve proper placement inevitably gives me a wedgie of catastrophic proportions.
The wedgie must be plucked.
There is no choice in this matter. The alternative is lying there, feeling fabric slowly working its way into places fabric should never venture, creating a discomfort that will prevent sleep until the heat death of the universe.
So I pluck. And shift. And adjust. Which brings on the sleepiness itchies.
You know the ones. Those phantom itches that appear the moment your body realizes you’re trying to be still. Nose. Ankle. That spot on your back you can only reach if you’re double-jointed or part-octopus. I scratch them all, thrashing around like a beached halibut, making little harumph sounds of frustration, which triggers The Cough again, and we’re back where we started.
The Moisture Problem
Finally. FINALLY. I settle. I drift off. I sleep deep.
And then I drool.
Not a little. A lot. We’re talking biblical flood levels of saliva. My pillow develops its own microclimate. If you’re keeping score of what makes a terrible sleep partner, we’re now at: coughing, farting, wedgie-plucking, and biblical drooling.
Sometimes my more adventurous dreams make me sweat profusely. Like the one where this smoking hot metal chick keeps trying to get me to invest in her blacksmithing business. She’s wearing a leather apron and wielding a hammer and I’m standing there with a briefcase full of monopoly money trying to explain why her business model is unsustainable in a post-apocalyptic economy where currency is bottlecaps.
I wake up drenched. The sheet clings to me like plastic wrap. My own face feels like a damp sponge.
Everything gets dewey. Yes, dewey. I’m using that word instead of the M-word because some people get their panties in a wad over “moist,” which I’ve never understood. It’s just a perfectly cromulent word describing dampness. But fine. Dewey it is. Which is fitting, actually, given my later arguments about the Dewey Decimal System. Everything connects. I’m like a literary ouroboros eating my own tail, except with more phlegm.
Speaking of dewey (see how nice that sounds?), this condition gives me the chills.
Suddenly, I’m shaking the entire bed like we’re experiencing a 4.5 magnitude earthquake, my teeth chattering like a malfunctioning wind-up toy, and I’m instinctively grabbing for all the covers because my lizard brain has decided I’m moments away from hypothermia.
Karie, my long-suffering wife, does not appreciate this development.
The Dreams of a Madman
Once the shaking subsides and I drift back into sleep, the dreams begin. And boy, do I dream.
Most of my nocturnal adventures happen in the same city. This impossible amalgamation of subways and ocean views, beautiful houses and great restaurants, and occasionally, Baby Highland Cows. The little ones with the shaggy hair and the adorable faces.
Last Tuesday, I woke Karie at 2:47 AM because there were Baby Highland Cows in my dream, and they were running toward me, and they were SO CUTE, and she absolutely HAD to see them.
“Karie. KARIE. Baby Highland Cows. Look. LOOK AT THEM.”
She could not, in fact, see them.
“I’m gonna punch you in the throat,” she said, with the cold precision of someone who has given this threat serious consideration.
I slunk back to my side of the bed, properly chastised, and entered a new dream where I was in a heated argument with a committee about ending the Dewey Decimal System. Which, as everyone knows, was invented by Donald Duck’s nephew. Yes, the same Donald who doesn’t wear pants. Ever.
I feel all Donalds do this. Especially the Carrot in Chief.
My dream-argument was ironclad: With AI and computers, we don’t need decimal identifiers. We can organize books alphabetically. Or by color. Or by smell. Imagine a whole section that just smells like vanilla and old libraries and maybe a hint of bourbon. The old card catalogs could be repurposed to store useless trinkets, condiment packages, or converted into decorative plant holders.
Follow me for more household and decorating tips.
The Conclusion
So here’s what I’m offering: You get me awake. Charming, funny, relatively hygienic. We can have delightful conversations about literally anything. I will make you laugh. I will listen to your problems. I will even do that thing you like.
But the moment my eyes close, I become a different organism entirely. A sleep demon. A nocturnal terror. The human equivalent of a garbage disposal that’s trying to eat a spoon while also somehow catching fire.
Karie has learned to sleep through most of it. She’s developed the thousand-yard stare of a war veteran. She can ignore the coughing, the farting, the cover theft, the 2 AM Baby Highland Cow alerts. She’s evolved beyond my chaos.
But you? You haven’t been battle-tested. You haven’t built up the necessary emotional calluses. One night with me and you’ll understand why sleep deprivation is considered a form of torture in seventeen countries.
So let’s keep this simple: I’ll meet you in a broom closet. We’ll have our fun standing up like civilized adults. Then you go back to your peaceful, drool-free existence, and I’ll go back to my matrimonial petri dish where my wife has already accepted that she married a man who occasionally wakes her up to show her invisible livestock.
It’s a system that works.
Cough. Cough.
Karie has read this and confirms the thousand-yard stare is real. She also wants you to know she’s accepting donations for her “I Married a Sleep Goblin” support group.
Key Takeaways
- The author presents himself as a terrible sleep partner, describing his complex sleeping rituals and the chaos they bring.
- He details the challenges of settling under the covers, adjusting pillows, and unexpected coughs and bodily noises during the night.
- The article humorously illustrates the author’s disruptive bedtime habits, which include drooling, wedgie adjustments, and bizarre dreams.
- His wife has learned to cope with his sleep disturbances, while he warns others of the consequences of sharing a bed with him.
- In the end, he suggests a humorous arrangement to avoid inflicting his sleep habits on anyone else.
