Bouncing Between the Blankets with Tigger



Who? Me? Tigger?

 You certainly can't tell by looking. By observation alone I bet you'd think my husband, Tim, is a serious sleeper. I mean, just take a gander--handsome as hell with resolute stamped all over him like a very serious USDA prime cut of beef. He's serious about so many things, surely he'd be serious about sleeping, right? Truly, it often happens that he does sleep like a normal, serious, sleep-loving person. However, on a somewhat regular basis, he turns into a night time Tigger.

You remember Tigger. From Winnie-the-Pooh? Striped, stuffed, sprightly, supple? He came spring-loaded onto the scene a little bit later (Chapter 2 of  House at Pooh Corner) than the regular cast of characters. He spelled his name T-I-double guh-err. And do you remember what Tiggers love to do and do best? Ding, ding, ding! You are correct. Tiggers love to BOUNCE.

I know, I know. Hard to believe isn't it? Anyone who knows Tim even a little bit can't imagine him bouncing. "Tim" and "bounce" go together like "Santa" and "pirouette". Or maybe I should say "Tim" is to "bouncy" as "Charles Bronson" is to "fluffy". It just doesn't follow. In fact, if Tim were an actual tiger, most of us in the know would think of him like this:


"Your answer was not well constructed and does not please me in the least."


And not like this:

Boing! Boing! Boing!

Nevertheless, the fact remains:  On occasional nights of torment, a rash of restless bounciness sets in.  Tim's inner Tigger gets triggered.

Bounce-inducing sleep scenarios:

1) Vampire dreams. In Tim's fantasy-driven psyche, vampires can assume nearly any form. So far I've experienced by proxy cat vampires, zombie vampires, and porno-babe vampires. True, I thought the porno-babe vampires were pretty funny. Ooooo! So scary!  But, hey, I get it. A vampire of any sort is horrifying even if she is hot and horny. Most of us don't want to die by exsanguination. Although surely there are some who'd volunteer if the love bites were given by Jenna Jameson with fangs. (Any takers?)

2) Alien dreams. Sometimes it's the Predator alien, sometimes it's the Alien alien, sometimes it's a robot alien but often it's left to my own imagination because the Huzby doesn't enlighten me with the details. Sometimes the generic "alien" is as good a description as I receive.

3) Ghost dreams. Details of such are vague or nonexistent which is fitting for ghosts, I suppose. Apparently a ghost is a ghost is a ghost.

4) My wife's being mean to me dreams. I'm not sure why, but I seem to be a recurring incubus in my husband's nocturnal story lines. Kind of makes me wonder what I'm doing that feeds this iniquitous hallucination. These occur about once a month if not more. In these nightmares I'm mean to my husband in a variety of ways and differing scenarios and always for no reason at all. They tend to be somewhat infuriating for me also. When I hear of my fictional infractions in the morning, I too, am shocked at the atrocities I commit in these after dark dramas. I wish I could behave myself better, but apparently no matter what I do during real life I'm destined to remain a she-devil from purgatory in my honey's dream life.

5) Dreams about missing planes and forgetting where the car is parked. A common plague for my poor Tigger who has an anal side that more than occasionally rears its ugly rear.

6) Dreams combining any of the above, i.e.,
     ~My wife, the alien, is being mean to me and forgot where she parked the car so we miss the plane.
     ~Ghosts and aliens are colluding with my wife and being mean to everyone by moving their parked cars. Everyone misses their planes.
     ~Aliens, ghosts and my vampire wife are all making a porno in the back of parked cars. Planes take off with no one inside.

7) The room is too hot.

8) Indigestion--food too spicy, food too gassy, food too mucho, drinks over poured.

9) The catch-all category: Anything else that's aggravating his overactive animus.

Of course, the vampires, aliens, ghosts, missed planes, misplaced cars, witchy wife, hot room, indigestion and suffering subconscious are Tim's first-person persecutions. I'd like to help, but there's not much I can do beyond waking him up when things get not only bouncy, but loud. The problem for me is that he does not suffer in first person, alone. When he has a bouncy night, I have a bouncy night.

We have a tempurpedic mattress which allows decent shock absorption and affords a muted experience if you have a restless sleep partner. Still, on a bouncy, trouncy night, while Tim-turned-Tigger is energetically, and athletically plopping the hours away, I'm experiencing our form fitting foam mattress as class II rapids river rafting expedition. And I'm not strapped in. It's a real life demonstration of Newton's law of motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tigger crashes down into the mattress and I am launched upwards. He flips; I flop. He clips; I clop. Good Sir Isaac, your law remains intact and in regular use at Tigger's house of bounce.

It's true, I could get up and go sleep in the other room leaving Tigger to his tough out his tortuous terrors on his own--but I don't. I can never seem to snap to full consciousness and make the move. Instead, I burrow down, hug my pillow tight and grab the covers with all my half-asleep might trying to hold down all the slumberland real estate I started with--not an easy task. I grumble, groan and huff  but never manage to remove myself from our tumultuous nocturnal tango to the quietude of the foldout couch. I suppose you could say that in response to Tim turning Tigger, I turn tick. You know how ticks are, the harder you try to get them out, they more tightly they hold on.

Uh, oh. I think I see the seed of a new nightmare.