Being rip van winkle







Being rip van winkle

The saying goes that sleep- yea not death- is a leveler, but true to tradition, for some of us, the degree of severity is more equal than the others’. Every time I try to remember something from when I was young, I was sleeping. My world for some reason used to revolve around sleep. Father used to say, “you will once be taken away by thieves while sleeping.” But that never seemed to deter me. Boy oh boy did I love my sleep. Wait a minute, I still do.

Because I was not the ideal child for my father, I aimed to please, as a result had this attachment to him that bordered on obsession. I simply adored the guy. As a result I used to hang around him a lot. On one of these afternoons, my dad and I were taking a walk on a dusty kabale road, and before I knew it I was staggering across the road. Dad thought I was just being silly, until ii actually fell in a pot hole. He pulled me out, dusted me and looked at me incredulously. There, I had wasted any chance of convincing him that I would be as good as any boy he had had.

And so my sleeping woes continued, and everyone at home seemed to accept me the way I was. That is how father made his first mistake. Taking me for granted. I loved the times when I fell sick, because then I got to sleep in my father’s bedroom. On one of these nights, my father assuming I was dead asleep, brought a girlfriend a long with him, after a night of drinking and got down to doing that thing that grown ups do.(don’t look shocked, there were two beds in his room) All the while I was listening. The next morning, I wore this all knowing look on my face, that left dad in no doubt that he had been discovered for what he was. Now I had my dad on my finger.

Then there was this time I could not stop dozing while doing my homework, so I decided to take a break and grab some fresh air on the veranda. That is where I was an hour later when I woke up to discover that I was soaked in rain that had been pouring for about 5 minutes before the cold finally rendered me conscious. I became the laughing stock of my family for over a year, until my younger sister shit her dress at school in terror of corporal punishment.

My sleeping habits had everyone scared for me every time they put me on a bus to a certain location, always fearing that I would miss the place while sleeping. They were never wrong. The soft purring of the vehicle as rubber hits stone is just a lullaby for me. Even now, after a hard day at work, it is a miracle that somehow I find my way home from wherever the taxi will have dropped me when I rouse myself from slumber.

And the one memory I am not proud to share is that once I even slept during sex.

2 loungers burdening me:

Iwaya said...

I used to think it was a myth, that women fall alsleep during sex, well some of them. What was wrong with the sex, that boring?

the antipop said...

hey iwaya,
it was perfectly good sex.
well thats at least wat i remembered, until i woke up the next morning only to realise there was some unfinished business.
it does not happen anywhere does it?

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