June 1991 – Sincerely Sire Newsletter

 

                                  SLEEPING BEAUTY?

 

During the first few years of my marriage to Rosemarie (Roe) in

the seventies, I learned some fairly strange things about her and I

wrote to you about them in this newsletter.  Things like me never being

able to figure out why my toothbrush was black, until I caught her using

it to put on her mascara one morning.  And the way she'd leave the cap

off the toothpaste (so that it would ooze out of the tube and harden)

because she liked to chew it.  Things like that took some getting used

to, but I did.  Sure my teeth have blackened a little over the years, and

I chew Crest instead of Clorets, but I can handle it.  I can handle 

anything to make this marriage work . . . At least I thought I could

until I made this most recent discovery about Roe.

 

I'm talking about her sleeping habits.  Roe has a rather odd method of

falling asleep;  Whereas I close my eyes and then go to sleep, she opens

her eyes and then goes to sleep.

 

Surprisingly, I didn't discover this was the way she fell asleep, until

this, our sixteenth year of marriage.  We were in bed and I was looking

into her wide open eyes carrying on what I thought was a conversation, 

when I realized she was in some sort of a trance. Her eyes were bloodshot

and in a fixed stare.  I snapped my fingers in front of her face and got

no response, nothing.  And then, a few seconds later, abruptly, silently,

her eyelids fell.  Scared the living daylights out of me.

 

I asked her about this strange phenomenon the next morning, and she

informed me that that was the way she always fell asleep - - With her

eyes open.

 

This made me think that if she was really asleep when her eyes were open,

then the converse must also be true; she's awake when her eyes are

closed . . . Maybe she hasn't been talking in her sleep all these years

after all.  Maybe she's just been talking.

 

This would mean that for most of our marriage she's been asleep when I've

been awake and I've been asleep when she's been awake.  This would also

mean that the only time we're both awake is when she's in bed with her

eyes closed and I'm in bed with my eyes open.  And it would of course

follow that the only time we're both sleeping in when I'm in bed with my

eyes closed and she's in bed with her eyes open.

 

This means when I asked her to marry me over sixteen years ago, it wasn't

the tender glow of young love I saw in her eyes that special day, it was

a catatonic condition.  She was sound asleep.

 

No wonder this marriage has been such a challenge.  Talk about a lack of

communication! We're never conscious at the same time.  I knew something 

was out of whack here.  This explains her poor driving record and why her 

eyelids droop and eventually close as she drinks her coffee in the morning.

 

Next time she closes her eyes and wakes up, I'm going to have a long talk

with her about this problem.  I just hope she doesn't open her eyes and

fall asleep on me.

 

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