So today I'm delving into the jungle that is Reddit to learn all about how to sleep better. Come along for the ride, it'll be eye-opening (or closing, if you wanna be literal). U/monkeyswingin asked:
People who fall asleep within few minutes, how do you it?
Here we go, Sleep 101. Take notes, there will be a test at the end of this article that is 90% of your final grade.
That last tip sounds the most effective, tbh.
“Day dream like I would as a kid, get so immersed I fall asleep."
“The trick for me is meditation. Practice it all day every day. Don't think unless you need to, to accomplish something. Once it becomes your innate state of being, falling asleep happens in about 30 seconds. Just listen to your breath without thinking, and if you're in bed and it's dark, you'll fall asleep almost immediately.
Another way is to drink 3-4 9% IPAs starting at 5 pm."
I’m gonna try this tonight.
At Home Reaction GIF by IKEA USAGiphy“I never used to be able to sleep through the night. I was up at 2 or 3 am for 3 hours. I read this can be due to anxiety. So I moved my sleep time from 9:30-10 to 11:30-12. So I am utterly exhausted by that time.
If I'm struggling to fall asleep, I try to re-image a dream I had another night or go through flexing each muscle and then imagining it off once flexed (starts my with each toe).”
Sometimes it comes from adaptation.
“I was homeless for about a year. One thing about being homeless: sleep conditions suck. I became conditioned to sleep through anything.
Now that I have a more stable life, falling asleep is a breeze.
So the trick? Homeless sleep therapy.”
Interesting way of putting it.
“I lay down, I sleep.
Having a fantasy (not sexual...although, of course, that does help you relax/get to sleep) to focus on definitely helps at times - but there can be times I overuse a fantasy so can't really get into it anymore, then I'm stuck without anything to focus on and my mind runs away with itself so I can't sleep."
God, I’m getting tired just reading these. Maybe I’ll have a normal sleep schedule again. Probably not, but a girl can dream.
Melatonin is the best.
Homer Simpson Coffee GIF by swerkGiphy“No caffeine after noon, don't lay in bed unless you're going to sleep, and routine bed/wake up times
I also have medication just in case (melatonin and a real sleep aid).”
“I used to think caffeine didn't really do anything for me (I don't "need" a cuppa in the morning to get me going, nor do I feel any kind of rush after a drink), but I noticed that if I have coffee in the evening, I find it harder to sleep at night. It's really noticeable since I'm one of those who usually falls asleep within minutes of going to bed. So just to be safe I think it's okay to drink it earlier in the day, but not past tea time or something.”
Heads have a hard time shutting up at night.
“It literally takes me on average 30-45min to fall asleep if not longer at times. This is mostly due to my head just never shutting up. I constantly daydream, fantasize, or re-live moments of the day/ week and I can't turn it off. It sucks.
I only recently started taking sleep gummies, but they only help me stay asleep not fall asleep.”
Certain tricks work for certain people.
“Sadly there's no trick to it. I don't do any of the stuff you're supposed to - no cutting back on electronics, or only using your bed to sleep. I drink caffeinated sodas near bedtime, I'm not as active as I should be, I have anxiety, etc.
When I feel sleepiness stirring behind my eyes - I go lay in bed, put down my phone, and I'm gone in fifteen. I have random nights of fitful sleep but generally it comes easy. I also dream every night, sometimes several different ones.
I am very grateful as several close friends struggle with insomnia.”
My weird sleep thing is that I fall asleep in about two seconds if I sleep on the couch, rather than the bed. Weird.
Sleep hygiene is important.
Tired Kim Kardashian GIFGiphy“I've posted something like this before, but sleep hygiene.
I used to be a full on insomniac, laying awake in bed for hours, getting maybe a few hours of fitful sleep a night, always tired. I'm an anxious person and stuff would just run through my head all night and I couldn't stop it.
These days, I fall asleep within minutes and get restful sleep about 80% of the time.
Sleep hygiene changed my life, but fair warning, you're probably not going to like what it entails.
Start using your bed only for sleeping and sex. Don't read your phone, watch TV, play video games, etc. And start a regular bed time. It doesn't matter if for a few weeks you can't fall asleep, just get into bed at 10pm, read a book (paper or sidelit e-ink, no backlights) for 30-45 minutes, then close your eyes and lay there. Focus on your breathing, slow and deep breaths, direct your attention back to the breathing as it invariably wanders.
In general, try to avoid eating or using backlit screens (tv, computer, phone, tablet) for at least an hour before bed. Don't drink caffeinated beverages after 2pm, even if "caffeine doesn't affect you." Try to get a bit of exercise every day, even if it's light exercise like walking or doing a 7 minute HIIT workout.
If you commit to this for a month or two, doing it even when "it's not working" I bet you you'll eventually begin to sleep better.
After you're in a habit, you can break these rules for special occasions once in a while and the impact won't be as big since you're in the habit already. But at least for a month or so, be rigorous and inflexible.
If all this seems too difficult, the half-@ss version is just no backlit screens an hour before bed. Doesn't matter if you have flux or a blue light filter on or whatever. Just don't do it.
Good luck!"
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Meditation always helps.
“Meditation.
It definitely did the trick for me. I used to struggle falling to sleep even someone else's light breathing would set me into a sleepless rage.
Once I got the hang of meditating I applied it to my sleep. I had a few techniques. One of them was each time I had a thought or train of thought, and came to the realisation I was having a thought I would let it go. Essentially stop thinking about it and focus on emptying my mind. Maybe I would focus on breathing or how exciting it will be to fall asleep and wake up feeling rested."
"I felt this basically broke the habit of me overthinking before sleep. Or getting too emotional from lights or sounds around me. It took quite a few weeks to get the hang of it and make it a habit but eventually I got there and started seeing results.
I also think investing in a good pillow and bed or mattress topper. I got my bed 2nd hand for $300 NZD and spent $80 NZD on a latex pillow and it totally changed the game.
Also a good stretching practice or yoga so your aches and pains don't wake you in the night."
CPAPs are a life-saver.
“I managed to train myself with my new CPAP machine. It is so much quieter and comfortable than my previous machine. Mask goes on and I am usually out within 15 minutes. If I reach more than 30 minutes I get up for a little while.”
Be Creative
"I don't know if it will help you but I choose a creative subject like a recent game where I'm trying to build a house or how I want to build my garden, etc. Then I just work through steps on what it would take, where they would go, etc. just avoid doing it with any actual work."
"Part of the reason people can't stop thinking about a work task while falling asleep is because they're anxious they'll forget by morning. Sleep therapists or whatever instead suggest you write that down as a short note in a journal on night stand instead and don't focus on it until the next day."
Through the Calves...
"I have been using this trick for a few years that has not failed yet (that I'd use if i really had to sleep right then and there), which is to slowly relax all your body muscles/parts. Starting with your feet, relax your feet muscles and pretend that you no longer have feet, don't move it at all, then once you feel that your feet aren't there anymore, u move on to your calves and thighs, then hands, arms, etc. usually id fall asleep by the time i reach the calves."
The Game Inside
"I play a game inside my head where i imagine cleaning my room. It doesn't matter if my irl room is actually dirty or if the dream room even resembles mine, I just pick a few tasks and get to work. focusing on this keeps me from getting anxious about stuff that happened during the day, which i find is what keeps me up most often. plus it's relaxing, and i always fall asleep before i actually finish tidying."
Monsters Inc Reaction GIF by filmeditorExhaust...
"Sheer exhaustion. Or illness. Otherwise, I'm wide awake for too long."
"It's the exhaustion to me also. When I just sit at home doing nothing, I find it difficult to go to bed in the first place and when I do it's difficult to fall asleep too. When I work out during the day or have otherwise busy day, I usually fall asleep faster and the quality of sleep is much better for me as in I'm actually not tired the next day even when I've slept similar hours."
- Joulle
That's A Rap
"I wake up at 5am which helps me get tired earlier. Sexual release helps a lot whether it be real or masturbation. I turn on my side, and that's a rap. I don't have any tv on in my room either. It's dark. Probably not the answers you are looking for, but that is what happens. I tend to sleep through the night (go to bed around 10 or 10:30 and wake up at 5am)."
AC/DC...
"To make my brain shut up at night I put in earplug headphones and put a song on repeat. Having the music playing forces my brain to shut up and just repeat the song lyrics instead. I only do this with slow sad lofi songs that really only have a few lyrics. Trying to sleep to AC/DC wouldn't work. The only bad thing is that I wake up tangled in my earplugs."
9 to 5 Process
"I work hard so that by the end of the day I'm tired enough to pass out."
- AtomicXET
"This. If you haven't done much work that day and spend your last hours in front of a bright screen it's certain you aren't gonna get sleep. If you are exhausted the first thing you wanna so is sleep, late night internet browsing be dammed."
Press Play
"I just lie down and close my eyes. I'll often put a podcast on, but I rarely get past the first couple minutes without falling asleep."
"I fall asleep much faster with a podcast or audiobook on! Not sure why. But if I'm having a hard time sleeping I'll just play something and I'm usually asleep in minutes. Maybe it mimics being told a story to sleep when we were kids."
"For me it helps prevent my mind from wandering into anxiety territory which happens to me at times. If I get started worrying about one thing it will lead to more things to obsess about and sleep gets far away. A podcast or audiobook focuses me on that story and I have a much better chance of nodding off in a more timely fashion."
- Zinfan1
Gone...
At Home Reaction GIF by IKEA USAGiphy"I just lay my head on the pillow and.... I'm gone."
- M4dMil0
My husband can confirm that last one. Once he has his CPAP on, he’s out. I’m lowkey jealous, I say as I sit awake at nearly 1am writing this article.
Thanks for reading, now go to sleep. You gotta be up early.
Not the cute little wake-up type. But the dead of night with nothing but moonlight through the window, startle you awake as you type. I spotted my toddler standing in the dead center at the foot of my bed--in total silence, perfectly still, a small stream of light illuminating just half her face while she stared me down. Like chin low, eyes squinted, glaring. It felt like one of those haunted children scary movies. Kids are fun...
Redditor A_Jack_Of_Herrons wanted to know what scared others awake. They asked:
“What is the worst thing you've ever woken up to in the middle of the night?"
Terrifying sleep paralysis...
“I've only experienced it once, but it was terrifying. Woke up to pressure on my chest and couldn't move. Opened my eyes and there were three shadowy Asian women sitting on my chest, just grinning. When I tried to scream they reached out and held their hands over my mouth and nose and started pretending to scream at me. Would not recommend.” el_paradidlo
Just a wee bit of arson in the morning...
“My MIL pounding on our door at 2:30 a.m. because a guy who had struck my FIL's parked car several days prior came back in the middle of the night drunk to set the car on fire."
“Was especially fun because he'd apparently tried to do it earlier that night as well but the fire didn't fully catch (we didn't get woken up for that one) so he obviously was prowling around making sure his arson succeeded, and we had to sit around waiting and wondering if he'd come back and try to torch the house or something."
“Luckily they caught him fairly quickly while he was still driving around the neighborhood in his truck. No telling what his next plans were. Scary." isilluminated
“They described the centipede as barbed wire walking across their face."
“I was in Puerto Rico at the time with a group of others. Our sleeping accommodations were on the floor. I woke up to someone saying ‘it bit me, it bit me.’ In my slumber my first thought was ants. I wish it was ants.”
“This person had a centipede crawl across their face while they were sleeping and grabbed it with their hand. The centipede proceeded to wrap around their hand, biting it, and drawing blood. They described the centipede as barbed wire walking across their face.”
“This thing was pushing close to a foot in length and managed to escape before we could do anything about it. They had to be seen by a doctor for the bite and none of us slept on the floor again after that. We just put benches together to at least have a little feeling of safety. I hate centipedes.” 2DucksInABathtub
"dude, we just slept through a tornado."
“Had a friend visit me in college. We went on one of those crazy night out benders and got back to my house around 3:30-4am. Woke up a couple of hours later to my cell phone ringing. My dad was excitedly asking me if we were alright from the storms that had passed through (he lived 170 miles to the west).”
“Confused, I rolled over and looked out my living room window. There was devastation EVERYWHERE. A string of tornadoes had ripped through the island I lived on and trees were down, power lines ripped up, roofs torn off of houses...pretty much the works. It nudged my friend and just said, ‘dude, we just slept through a tornado.’” RevSnakebite
Probably smelled like lunch...
“A black bear sniffing my head through a thin tent wall.” yotanerd
bear GIFGiphyLock your doors people...
“Sleeping over at my boyfriend's place, I'm awake for some reason about 3 am. I hear noises in the living room that I assume are the cats. But it doesn't sound quite right. I hear boyfriend's roommate get up to investigate. A moment later he appears in the doorway saying: There's somebody in the house.”
“It was a homeless guy, probably mentally ill, he'd just walked in the (yes, stupidly unlocked) front door. Just standing in the living room. Boyfriend jumps up and confronts him, guy claims he was just cold and that he knocked first. He definitely did not knock, but anyway he seemed harmless so we gave him a blanket and he left.”
“That door was LOCKED from that point forward. And I still wonder what was really going on there. He was trying to be quiet, and I've never seen a homeless person in that neighborhood, and why our house? I'm just glad nothing happened” ethottly
*GAGS*
“My 2 year old daughter was sleeping with me and I woke up slightly and thought I smelled something ‘off’. Not like poop but what my half-awake mind interpreted as maybe a strong sweaty smell or b.o.. I just figured I needed to wash the sheets.”
“However, once I completely woke and went into the bathroom to shower, I noticed some "chunks" that fell out my hair. Looking closer and going back into my bedroom, I realized that my daughter vomited during the night and we both had slept in the warm pool of it, snuggled up cozily against each other. Really a heart-warming moment. Or something.” SoggerBean
Have kids they said...
“My kid puking right in my face. Like, little dude, you weren't feeling well, so you got out of bed, walked right past the bathroom, and decided to let me know you were sick by puking on my face?” Bubba2475
Nightmare fuel...
“A wolf spider trying to lay eggs in my mouth.” fustigata
Spiders GIF by memecandyGiphy“I just remember one of the paramedics telling me I had a seizure...”
“Woke up inside the back of an ambulance. I had my first grand mal seizure and I apparently made some pretty terrifying sounds and rightfully scared my girlfriend. I just remember one of the paramedics telling me I had a seizure and when she asked me what day it was and my name and I couldn't remember I started crying.“ Ddgraves
Hopefully, none of us have to experience any of these awful wake-up calls, yikes!
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What follows is a good reminder that we should be careful of the things we say about people when we assume they are in deep sleep.
Curious to hear about strangers online, Redditor KingHanma asked:
"What's the Worst thing you've overheard while pretending to be asleep?"
Parents disclosed life-changing news in private. Or so they thought.
Matrimonial Miss
"I was 12 and my dad (Single Dad) telling his so called 'Friend' (Female) who was at the time living with us, 'Should we tell him that we are married?'"
"So this was my father's second wife and they really were married. I confronted my dad the next day and he had hid the fact from me for a month. I was super disturbed about what was happening around me. It did not work out between them and they ended up getting a divorce. So yayyyy."
"I was 15. I was at my sister's house babysitting my nephew and was asleep on the couch when she and her husband got home at about 2 am. The phone rang. It woke me but I lay there pretending to be asleep as I listened to her answer it. I heard her say, 'What!? Oh my god! Oh my god!'"
"She hung up and said to her husband, 'That was my dad. Diablo [my horse] got out of the pasture and went into the road. He got hit by a car and killed. How am I going to tell him?"
"I said, 'I already know.'"
"That was 45 years ago. It still hurts."
Alarms are better to wake up to than the following:
Hypocritical Parents
"My anti-drug parents drunk as sh*t and on a drug binge. Got up to pee at like 6am when the noise finally stopped and there had to be $200 worth of drugs on my kitchen table."
"We lived in a small, one-story house. There's no way anyone could've slept through their BS."
"And my mom still cries when I talk about weed."
The Confirmation
"He's not asleep."
– AyamXII
"My mom once woke me up to tell me to go to sleep."
"I was asleep. She said my name and shook me, which woke me up, and then she told me to go to sleep."
How She Really Feels
"My step mom talking sh*t about me to my dad when I was a kid."
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The Warning
"Roommate talking to another roommate about how he deserves to have sex with this girl that he's close friends with and how mad he was that she kept not sleeping with him so he planned on inviting her over soon and getting her wasted and taking advantage of her. I found the girl online and warned her."
Rude Awakening
"When I was a kid, a friend and I were both gymnasts, but at different studios."
"She invited me over for an Open Gym Sleepover, which is like when 30 kids all sleep over at the gym with very little supervision, running and jumping on equipment like trampolines, vaults, ropes, balance beams, and parallel bars. God bless the 90's, we had a blast."
"Now the guy who ran this gym, I had a weird feeling about. My parents once had me try out for a team at his gym, and he inspected my body with his hands. It was in full sight of everyone, including my mother, but it was just weird. My mother later told me she was too stunned to object in the moment. He kept touching my butt and telling me to tighten my 'butt' (glutes), which I didn't understand. He kept doing it repeatedly."
"Anyway, at the sleepover, I lay down next to my friend but stayed awake. I saw Coach Hands stepping quietly between the sleeping girls, taking flash photographs. When he came over to do it to me&my friend, I made eye contact with him during the flash. He quickly went away and stopped taking pictures."
"The next morning, he pulled me into his office with a female coach (his wife?) and explained to me that the photos were for promotional purposes. He even had a little poster board made up. I didn't really beleive him, but at that age (10) I didn't really understand how dangerous he could have been. I never talked to an adult about it, just my friends, and we were all🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️"
I was never in a situation where I overheard someone talking smack about me, but I did have the misfortune of "sleeping" in a hotel suite with friends who hooked up in the bed next to me.
A group of about 20 of my college friends pooled money together to ring in the new year in a posh hotel. Of course, there was alcohol. Plenty of it.
I passed out early as I'm a lightweight, but then I woke up to moaning sounds next to me. I was paralyzed – torn between drawing attention to myself by high-tailing it out of the room or pretending to be asleep and enduring the sloppy sounds.
I decided to ring in the new year by choosing the latter, and I still regret my horrible decision. Happy new year to me.
One Reddit user asked:
What's the worst place you ever had to spend the night?
We expected some interesting answers from more adventurous users who travel, hike, etc. Everybody loves a good seedy hotel story.
What we weren't expecting was a comment section full of bonkers stories about private islands, failed drug smuggling, surviving disasters and unintentionally doing permanent ear damage over some snoring.
Yeah. It's a lot.
Canada Didn't Have Hard Feelings
A bus terminal park bench after being turned away at the Canadian border.
I was on a Greyhound and stupidly tried to bring weed across the border to avoid paying expensive prices in Toronto. I was also pretty drunk as it makes bus rides tolerable.
They found it and charged me $100 to take me back to the bus station in Burlington, VT. I slept on a bench there until the next bus left in the morning.
It's one of the safer bus stations for sure, but cold hard benches suck no matter where they are
Canada didn't have hard feelings and let me in that time.
After A Rafting Accident
IN A TREE!
Had a rafting accident and the three of us ended up spending 18 hours (overnight) hanging on to tree branches in the middle of an over flowing river until we were rescued the next morning by the swift water rescue team.
We took turns sleeping as the other two grabbed on so we would not fall in.
Picture us in no shoes, shorts and t-shirts as the temp dropped down below 50 degrees that night. Made the front page of the local newspaper, our 15 minutes of fame I guess.
The Psych Ward
The psych ward.
Especially when they have to come in every 10 minutes and shine a light into your eyes to make sure you're alive. Or when there are people screaming down the hall all night.
Spent two months in one in 2018. I don't know how they expect you to get better when they keep you from getting good sleep, good food, fresh air, or any social connections whatsoever.
- d24602
Alabama In July With No AC
Used to live with a guy up in Hayden Alabama. I actually loved it, it was peaceful and we had very few neighbors, I took care of the dogs.
Mid July and the a/c goes out, it was supposed to rain all week with about 80% humidity coupled with 95+ temperature outside. The house turned into a swamp, we opened all the windows and doors, turned on every fan we could find and still it was just awful.
The bedroom was so hot we couldn't use it so we slept on the couches which were so soaked by the end of the day that you could press your hand into it and your hand would come up wet.
It was so bad, we walked around stark naked in a last ditch attempt to beat the heat before we broke down and called a repair service.
With Wet Toilet Paper In My Ears
I slept in a hotel bathroom with wet toilet paper in my ears once when I was a stupid kid.
I was sharing a room with my dad and my brother, both of whom were terrible snorers (my dad at least has a CPAP now and my brother's estranged, so two problems solved). I couldn't sleep, couldn't handle the snoring... so I went in the bathroom, wadded up some toilet paper, wet it, jammed it in my ears, and tried my best to get some sleep.
Wouldn't recommend, did some long-term damage to one eardrum from a bit of toilet paper that was stuck on there for years afterward.
A "hOsPiTaL"
My mom had a heart attack in one of the highest 'criminals per capita' cities in India, Etawah.
Some relatives took her to a hospital. I arrived the same night.
They showed me to the room she was in, and I don't think I've seen a more depressing room in my life - and I grew up here in India, in not a rich family.
The walls had spits EVERYWHERE.
The bedsheet had stains older than me.
The medical equipment was outdated.
Rats and mosquitos everywhere.
The walls had cracking paint.
The floor was filthy.
The bathroom was so bad, I took one look and I went outside to piss on some bushes.
When I asked where could I sleep, they flung a thin @ss dirty AF mattress on the floor, no pillow, and told me that's my bed. There was on fluorescent lightbulb giving off a feeble, 'vibrating' light that cast most of the room in shadows. The paint on the bedrails was chipped and stained, the small cupboard beside the bed was greasy with accumulated dirt so thick you could write in it.
I was quite stressed over the medical emergency for my mother and depressed because of the room, but I sucked it up and stayed for the night since we were to transfer to Delhi and a much better hospital in the morning. You know; one where you couldn't get infections just from touching the bed rails.
I fell asleep around 4 am, tired as f*ck. I could hear the rats scratching in the bathroom and see cockroaches on the walls from what little light came through under the door once the lights were out in mother's room. It's so vivid in my memory I can recall every single silly disgusting detail of the room.
And that is the story of the worst place I ever had to spend the night in, a "hOsPiTaL".
A Chartered Boat To A Private Island
I had a boat chartered to drop me off on a small island, and was scheduled to pick us up the next day.
As it turns out, we weren't able to get off the beach onto the actual island because of a razor sharp barnacle wall surrounding the whole area, so we were trapped on a sand bar until the next morning.
So unfortunately, as night fell, the tide started rising, and only a tiny sliver of the sand bar stayed above sea level. The ground was soaking wet and sopped through the tent we were sleeping in, but to add insult to injury, turns out the sand bar was also a huge horseshoe crab mating ground, so the entire island was swarmed by horny horseshoe crabs.
So the rest of the night we basically were wet, cold, and being swarmed by horseshoe crabs f*cking against our tent.
Truly one of my worst nights
The Doll Room
80s horror GIF by absurdnoiseGiphyMy aunties house. She collects dolls. Antique, creepy @ss dolls. Her guest room doubled up as one of her doll storage rooms.
Imagine being in a room with hundreds of creepy dolls on shelves all around the room, all staring at you. Didn't help that her house is Victorian and weirdly laid out. Her living room was ground floor, and then you'd go down a steep set of stairs into the basement (which is where the guest room was..) this led out to her back yard, weird house built on a weird slope.
I couldn't move from fear, I literally lay there all night terrified to move incase one of the dolls moved. 😂 Branches hitting against the window and the rattling of her heating pipes helped make it a very horrific night.
I refused to ever sleep there again, so she introduced me to the other guest room (that I didn't know existed) and this room was first floor, zero dolls, pretty pleasant place to sleep. Wtf did she torture me with the doll room 😂😂
Triple Locked Doors
Some crummy motel in Montana.
We had started a road trip and I couple tell I was the only person of color to come through that place for years probably. The maintenance guy followed me into my room and gave me some story about checking to see if the cable was working. Other staff and guests were sizing me up.
I triple locked my door and the window, and I slept with my pocket knife under my pillow that night
Maybe Max Knew
Llano State Park in Junction, TX.
I was five months pregnant and enormous (twas a 12+ lb baby boy) ... it was Memorial Day weekend and we decided to go camping. We had the one baby in the oven, an 18 month old "Max", and a ten year old "Jake".
Why we thought this was a good idea, I'll never know. Chalk it up to rose tinted glasses. We live in the Houston area. The drive alone was arduous enough.
We get there though, and it's lovely and wind blown and wild. We set up camp and the balmy ninety degree temps take a nose dive. We had sleeping bags but this cold was relentless. Plus it was windy.
Max kept crying and crying, something he never did. He was always a chill child. But from the moment we set up camp he had become clingy and fussy and now that night had fallen he was full on wailing.
We didn't know how to handle a crying child. Hand to God, he had never cried like this before. We never had to comfort him. We had no clue what to do besides hold him close and rock him gently.
He didn't seem to be sick. No fever. He wasn't prone to ear infections and his ears didn't seem to be bothering him. He was dressed warmly, unlike the rest of us.
It was full on dark, just past nine, when a park ranger rolled into our campsite. He said he was going to have to ask us to leave if Max didn't settle down because we were disrupting quiet time.
So we gathered our things and bundled into our truck. As soon as we were in the truck Max stopped crying.
He began baby talking and leaned into me and snap! fell asleep. We waited a beat and then moved back to the tent, which we hadn't dismantled yet.
We had just begun to settle down when he woke and began to cry again, this time with renewed vigor. We went back to the truck.
I told my husband he and Jake should go ahead and sleep in the tent and I would stay in the truck with Max, the screamer. Quietly, they did just that. A couple of minutes later Max woke up screaming again. He didn't settle down until my husband and Jake got back into the truck.
We resigned ourselves to a long, uncomfortable night cramped in the truck. I needed to pee, but didn't dare leave because I thought Max would wake up crying again. Max slept through the night.
As soon as dawn broke we packed up the rest of our stuff and in the midst of doing that my husband saw fresh, large piles of animal scat behind the area where our tent had been pitched.
Now there haven't been bears, wolves or mountain lions in Texas in decades. But that was one big pile of sh*t.
Maybe Max knew something we didn't know. In any case... that was THE most uncomfortable, long night ever.
10% Off
On a drive to Florida, my dad pulled into a Super 8 in Tifton, Georgia. I had misgivings from the get-go, as the place didn't look great, but it was only one night. Only one night, you can live through anything, right?
For some reason, my father was adamant that no one but himself enter the lobby to check in. We absolutely had to stay inside the car at all costs. This was the first clue that perhaps something wasn't quite right, as this rule was not so strictly maintained elsewhere.
Upon opening our room door, a moldy smell immediately hit our nostrils. Stepping into the room gave a strange sensation on our feet, which quickly revealed itself to be caused by the stickiness of the carpet. Oddly, the carpet had also been cut up and laid back down repeatedly. A quilt carpet. One does so wonder why.
The entire room was covered with a layer of dust - some surfaces moreso than others. The nightstands, for example, only had a light, but visible coating; the beer cans crumpled and stashed behind the television, on the other hand, boasted a good quarter- to half-inch. The walls had a odd sickly yellow tone, as though they'd been plastered with successive layers of smoke, dirt, and general bodily fluids.
My emotions ran so high that I felt as though I simply was too overwhelmed to respond. My mother, God bless her, did that for us, by throwing a protest, but my father pointed out that this place was cheap, and it's not like we could stay anywhere else on such short notice if we abandoned this place. Further protests were met with a firm refusal to allow us to stay elsewhere. It was only one night, after all...
We attempted to make the best of it. I went to brush my teeth, but found myself unable to do so when the water from the sink faucet was brown. Attempting to procure water from the bathtub produced the same result. At this point, I realized I had few options outside of simply going to bed and hoping to fall asleep and wake up and get the hell away from this horrible, horrible place.
I pulled back the bed sheets, which had the texture of laundered sandpaper, and immediately noticed an odd type of circular hole I'd never seen before. "Cigarette burn," my mother said. She also warned me not to look at the underside of the bedspread, or inside the nightstand drawers, or behind or underneath the bed, with the implication that this had been done during my fruitless attempt to procure clean water in the bathroom.
I didn't sleep. We arrived in Florida the next day. My father sent off a lengthy, angry email of complaints to the Super 8's management, and in return, received a tepid apology and 10% his next stay in response. "Screw that," we responded in unison.
Or so we thought.
A week later, guess what parking lot we pulled into in Tifton, Georgia?
While my mother screeched and I fought tears, my father shouted about how they'd given him 10% off.
The Astrodome
The Astrodome during hurricane Rita. I got to take a shit in a trash can with an audience of dozens and that was one of the nicer parts of that week.
The smell in that place must have been dense.
Wow, that's just miserable sounding. Glad you survived it.
An Italian Cave
Ironically in Italy's beautiful Cinque Terre.
But we were sleeping in a cave by the beach that we didn't know was preoccupied.
Me and my brother were travelling with basically no money and decided it would be super fun to sleep on the streets instead of spending money on a hostel.
Our Mother had gifted us this trip for our birthdays and paid and planned the whole trip. Most nights she had booked us a place to stay but some nights she planned for us to find our own accommodation. She didn't know this but we had no spending money as we were broke as hell. One night we decided to spend the money we did have on booze instead of a hostel.
We searched the day for good spots to sleep and found a couple of good options. We stumbled across a cave by the touristy part of one of the beaches. There are five famous beaches that are extremely crowded during the day but at night everybody returns to the hotels and restaurants leaving the area clear. The cave we found was out of the way slightly enough and nobody goes there at night time.
Once it got late enough we headed over to the cave with different bits of cardboard we found in a dumpster. We set up two cardboard beds are drank Italian wine while watching the beautiful night sky over the sea with waves crashing. We thought we were in heaven.
The first hour was fine but soon enough the novelty and wine were wearing off. We realized the genius cardboard idea wasn't so comfortable after only an hour. Restlessness I can handle. What came next though still has me itching.
Once we had settled, stopped talking and started trying to go to sleep we started to hear little noises coming from within the cave. Squicky little noise letting us know we weren't alone.
I don't have any phobias and am really not scared of much but it's at this stage I should mention my childhood fear of rats. When I was little my father, who was a history teacher, would tell me stories including the history of the Black Plague. The tales of disease caused by rats haunted my young dreams and to this day I can't handle the sight of a rat.
So here we are trying to get to sleep when we start to hear the little noises and footsteps getting closer and closer.
We ended up making it through the night without any serious rat interactions. We were so creeped out by the rats that we resorted to setting up a rat barrier. We had plastic bags that we set up a perimeter around our sleeping area. It wouldn't keep the rats out but if they walked over the plastic bags they would make a ruffling sound notifying us if a rat was getting too close.
All night long the plastic alarms were going off making us jump up screaming and yelling trying scare off the rats. The cave itself also had little tiny rocks falling from the ceiling at random times. These little rocks also started tripping our plastic security alarm.
What we thought was going to be a night to remember ended up being a night to remember.
Not Even My Worst Tinder Hookup
BDSM themed love hotel in Tokyo after I missed the last train home. 3AM. Drunk off my ass with a tinder date.
Neither of us are good at Japanese. Call first place that pops up on Google maps as taking reservations at 3am. Go.
Oh lawd, there is a cage in this motherf*cker, it is in a basement of a very dubious looking building. The "bed" is a hard rubberized block. There are no sheets. There are no pillows. Reception gave us 3 towels to lie down on the bed.
There is the scariest shower room I've ever seen (don't worry, I did not take a shower in there), and no toilet - so if you have to pee, you have to walk down past reception to the shared toilets.
I can hear a lady screaming in another room. I am with a guy I met 4 hours ago and if he wants to murder me, i reckon nobody will come to find out till at least morning. On the other hand, dude didn't live here like I do and was probably thinking I was going to murder him or at least mug him.
In good news, I didn't get murdered. Had an alright time, made fun of badly censored porn that was on the TV, slept on a puddle of towels on a rubberized bed with a stranger as both of us hoped not to wake up with the other one absconding with our valuables, and train-of-shamed home in the morning.
Was my first Tinder hookup. It was not my last one or my worst one (dude was a cool guy, it wasn't his fault, and he took it all in stride and wasn't an a**hole. Also, he is probably on Reddit, I wonder if he will see this?).
Moral of the story: If you are going to hoe, know where to go so you aren't caught out and have to sleep in a cold ass dungeon without a single pillow. Also know when the fck the last train runs if you aren't ready to pay for a room and you don't look like a freaking idiot.
The Death Of Innocence
I went to an all girls boarding school in Africa that was known as a farmers daughter school.
During a time where farmers were being killed to take their land, there was a riot outside of the school. We listened to the mob outside the fence (maybe 100 feet from our room) chanting about the different ways they were going to r*pe and torture us if they got in.
I was 12. I have never been so terrified in my life.
They finally dispersed at about 5AM... and we were required to get up and 6 to go to class. Definitely the day any innocence I had died.
Camping In South Florida
Went camping in South Florida in the summer when I was about 10. My older brother insisted on setting up the tent, and all was great until a massive thunderstorm in the middle of the night.
That's when our tent flooded because he had picked a nice concave spot to set up. Good job, brother!
Commence three kids whining about being soaked, so we all went to go sleep in the car. After the rain stopped it got super hot in the car so we opened the windows...But it being summer in Florida, within about five minutes we were swarmed with mosquitoes and spent the rest of the night wide awake smacking them and itching (and probably bickering and complaining, if I recall correctly, as we were little shits when in close quarters).
The inside of my mom's car the next morning looked like an insane tiny massacre had happened, with bloody mosquito splats everywhere.
The spots were still there years later, and a great way to piss my mom off REAL quick was to dare to mention them, lol.
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