We grow out of a lot of things from infancy to childhood to teenage to adulthood. We may love a band when we’re thirteen and then revisit them a few years later and wonder how we could have been so stupid. Like Korn. I loved Korn, and they completely suck. They suck so much, but I thought they were the greatest thing I’d ever heard when I was young and hated everything in the world. And when you grow up in the suburbs in a happy home surrounded by people who love you that hate is a palpable but ignorant thing. I didn’t know what exactly it was that I hated, but man did I hate it so much.
The strangest thing that I grew out of, completely outside of my own control, was sleepwalking. As a young man, I would sleepwalk fairly consistently, and even became famous in my family for ending up in awkward positions due to my sleepwalking. Today, there’s no sign of any nocturnal exercise whatsoever, like I forgot how to do it. According to a couple of psychological studies I found online, this is actually a common occurrence. Children who sleepwalk generally grow out of it by age 15, which is about when I stopped doing it myself. However, by the time I reached that age, the damage had been done.
My most famous/infamous/embarrassing incident came around the age of 13 or 14. I can’t remember exactly what age, which may be a good sign that I’m starting to forget this incident ever occurred. The unfortunate bystander to all of my sleepwalking incidents was my mother, who possessed ears which could rival a canine’s in sensitivity. My mother and father’s room was located directly underneath mine, and after years of my father’s intense and frightening snoring, she had become a pretty light sleeper. So, even the slightest movement coming from the room above would stir her from her slumber, and she would investigate. In most cases, it was either my brother or me going to the bathroom or crossing the room to punch the other one in the head for some reason, but in some cases, it was because I was embarking on a late night unconscious quest.
My mother had already caught me in our front yard a few times, usually just standing outside the front door, but occasionally she found me walking down the front sidewalk on my way to who knows where. My most illustrious sleepwalking episode, however, occurred right in my own bedroom.
Of course, I don’t remember any of the specifics leading up to this actual event, and my mother was reticent to inform me of what she found. Eventually I gleaned out of her an explanation.
She awoke that night to hear someone pounding around upstairs in my bedroom. She could already tell that this was more than a quick trip to the bathroom as whoever was upstairs was traveling back and forth across the floor in errant patterns. Deciding to investigate, she quickly climbed the front steps and turned down the hall to my bedroom. When she found me, my back was to the door and I was facing the large closet in my room, the doors of which I had opened. She heard a strange noise coming from the closet and cautiously approached me and quietly called my name. It was only when she was a few feet away did she discover what I was actually doing.
Peeing.
I was peeing in the closet.
Instead of panicking, my mother patiently waited for me to finish urinating on the carpet. When I was done, I turned away from the closet to go back to bed, and even uttered a mumbled greeting when I saw my mother standing there. I walked back to my bed and climbed right in, completely and utterly asleep and leaving my mother to decide what to do with the micturation I had just spread all over the closet floor. She went back downstairs and gathered a few cleaning products and went to work. I remained asleep throughout the entire affair.
My mother handled the entire ordeal like a mature parent would, never chastising me or digging into me the fact that I had soiled the carpet in my room. For that, I am very grateful. Almost as grateful as I am for the fact that I no longer sleepwalk and piss all over things.
