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Johnson: A lifetime of talking while sleeping

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By Linda Johnson, Contributing Writer Updated 11:56 PM Saturday, March 20, 2010

Interrogating me would be senseless if I ever were to be captured by enemy combatants. Just let me nap; I’ll probably reveal everything.

I am a somniloquist. Simply, I talk in my sleep. I’ve been waking up roommates for at least half a century. My sister was the first to wake me so she could go back to sleep.

Husband says sometimes I’m easily understood, other times I’m incoherent.

Often, I have no recollection of my mumblings. If Husband awakens me, my brain may retain fragments I can decipher.

One nightmare from when I was a child involved flaming cars chasing me through the neighborhood. Boy, did that scream disturb my sister!

Today, my dreams range from teaching classes to the even more embarrassing. (No, I won’t share.) Son has heard me so often he just rolls over, knowing Dad will take care of me. However, Son does a perfect imitation of my sound of slumbering distress.

If I fall asleep with the television on, I may incorporate characters or actors from the show. I’ve been Katie Couric’s nanny, cooked with Alton Brown and jammed with Dave Matthews.

Evidently, the remnants of moving pictures burrow into my mind to play out in strange ways.

Last year, light-sleeping Husband awoke me. Once again, I had disturbed his sleep, “You were singing in your sleep.”

He told me he had not recognized the tune.

That was ok. I knew. I don’t know what triggered the dream, but I knew which song.

I was singing Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

Husband gave me the look I recognized as “if you say so.”

He told me it sounded jerky and staccato.

I assured him that I knew exactly what I had done.

I was singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” I was singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” like Peter Boyle the monster did in Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein.”

“Puttin’ on the Ri-i-i-i-i-tz.”

Husband sleeps with a di-i-i-i-itz.

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