Sleeping Biagis

Just as everyone has a different conscious personality, we each have a different unconscious personality.

Everyone has their little sleeping quirks. I, for example, talk in my sleep. Usually it's just incoherent mumbling, though friends have reported nights of absurdly loud singing and whispers of French nothings.

To the outside world, that's where it ends. For periods of weeks or months, however, I will have the most violent and terrifying nightmares. The kind of stuff that would make Hostel and Saw look like children's movies.

If I read the news for extended periods of time, these dreams get more gruesome. So I try not to read too many news stories. Did I mention that I’m studying journalism?

Julian, like myself, is a sleep talker. Unlike me though, Julian's sleep vocabulary is...colourful, to say the least. I have been woken up countless times by vulgar swearing and loud threats, knowing he’s asleep and fearing that he isn't.

One night during a sleepover, a friend documented these differences on a tape recorder. The transcripts went a little something like this:

Ariana: "I'm Babe the Pig! I'm Babe the Pig! And I'm going to eat you."

See? Harmless. Julian's on the other hand...

Julian: "I want big do.."

Friend: "What, Julian?"

Julian:"I want to big do!"

Friend: "What do you mean?"

Julian: "I want a big, fat guy!” (Wakes momentarily.) “Get the fuck outta here!"

Apparently, Unconscious Julian is a little bi-curious about big fat guys. That said, it would appear I'm repressing cannibalistic tendencies and gender/species confusion.

Now between my mother and father, from what you have already read, I'm sure you have guessed that Dad is, by far, the "eccentric" one.

This is only because I haven't taken the time to introduce you to Unconscious Susan.

Unconscious Susan is mean, bossy, mobile, sometimes violent, and an athlete.

Although this all must have begun at an early age, over the years she has gotten progressively worse.

Obviously, the person who has to deal with Unconscious Susan the most is my dad, considering they have been sharing a bed for the past 30 years. When they first got married, my mother seemed to have a lot of dreams that revolved around my father murdering her. One fine night, she was dreaming a lovely dream about how my dad was strangling her to death.

Seeing that my mother was distressed and thrashing around in her sleep, my worried father leaned over her to lightly shake her awake. Upon waking from her dream to see that yes, my father was indeed looming over her, she attempted to violently scratch his face off. And succeeded.

Not being able to hide what were clearly a woman's scratch marks down his face, my Dad went to work that day looking like a wife-beater. Trying to describe how "Susan just started clawing at my face for no reason!" is about as believable as "I walked into the door."

"I slipped on a banana peel" 

She describes another incident early in their marriage.

"Someone in the dream approached me and said,  'When you wake up, Mark is going to try to kill you.” And sure enough, when I woke up, there he was, asleep right beside me.”

She spent the next half an hour or so paralyzed with fear, until she realized that maybe she shouldn't take dream people's words as fact. Good advice, since I've definitely been told that I could fly on more than one dream occasion.

My own experiences with Unconscious Susan are just awkward encounters. I've been downstairs with friends when she's appeared in the hall, just staring at us for an uncomfortable period of time, then walking back upstairs to bed without a word.

She bosses you around. She'll wake up angry and demand you go to the kitchen, for no reason whatsoever. And damn if she's not passionate about you having to go stand in the kitchen for a few minutes and bond with the appliances.

She also falls asleep during every movie she's ever watched. Since she's slightly embarrassed by this fact, she periodically wakes up to offer insightful comments such as "The dialogue in this movie is so cliché," or "This is such a weak plot.” We just chuckle at her expense and wait the few seconds it takes for her to hang her head back and rhythmically open-mouth breathe as the movie continues.

The most entertaining by far has to be the athletics. She has recently taken up running in her sleep. She will describe waking up in the living room or in the kitchen, on her knees, and having no idea how she got there. She started locking her bedroom door in case she fell down the stairs. That helped keep her in the bedroom, but it didn't stop the running.  

Now instead of waking up on her knees and breathless somewhere in the house, she wakes up when her face collides with the door. She literally runs directly into walls, then face plants and ends up in a bruised heap on the floor.

My father is also a runner of sorts. If he hears a strange noise in the middle of the night, he'll fly into protection mode and run towards whatever shadow is threatening his sleeping family. 

Unfortunately for friends who take midnight bathroom breaks, he doesn't stop to make sure he has changed out of his birthday suit. Believe me, when you arrive home in the early morning hours after a few drinks, there is nothing more sobering than a middle-aged naked man charging into the room planning to kick your ass.

Post a picture of that on a sign and I promise you no thieves will be hopping that fence.

Daniel on the other hand does nothing even remotely interesting or embarrassing, other than light snoring. 

Boring. But maybe boring is a good thing compared to what else he could have ended up with being brought up Biagi.  

Youngest. Daughter.

My place in the family hierarchy.

I am the youngest. I am the only daughter.

Growing up the only girl amongst two boys certainly had its perks. By the time I came along, my parents were so desperate for a girl they warned me not to ask for details about how they "made sure" I came out female. I'm going to go ahead and believe it means they introduced more sugar and spice into their diet.

Of course, I was able to manipulate my father a lot better than the boys ever could. Since he was a strict disciplinarian, this was an advantage.

(Since I've moved away and he only gets to see me every few months, I can pretty much get whatever I want from him within the first 3 days of visiting home. After those 3 days are over, though, we usually have a huge fight because he feels neglected when I spend time at my friends' houses.)

I probably acquired more small, knick-knacky gifts than my brothers ever did, or ever wanted to. My father loves arts, crafts, jewelry, figurines, and--let's face it--most teenage boys don't.

My parents were also a lot more lenient with me than they were with, well...Julian. He sort of set the bar for bad behaviour. Anything I did paled in comparison.

Where my brothers are concerned, I know there isn't much they're not willing to do to keep me safe. On the other hand, growing up the youngest as well as the only daughter was also a struggle. As little sisters do, I trusted my brothers absolutely. As a result, I drank a lot of bug/dirt/vinegar/more-dirt cocktails.

 I clearly didn't realize this picture was being taken.

When I was 5, Daniel convinced me he had to cut my hand off because I had dared to peel some dead, sunburned skin off his back. He led me to the kitchen, where he took out a cutting board and the biggest knife we owned. He had me place my wrist on the board, swung the knife back over his head, and ... told me he was kidding. I still remember bursting into tears. He still remembers the spanking.

Eventually, I grew old enough to start infiltrating Julian's house parties. My over-protective brother would white-knuckle his bottle whenever he saw me talking to one of his friends. One night, he angrily and drunkenly barricaded me in the bathroom with the lights off because he thought his friends were looking at me. No one would let me out; Julian's fists were notorious.

Until I was 17, I was officially known as "Julian's Sister." This annoyed me, but sometimes it came in handy. I can remember tackling some girl on the soccer field and when she picked herself back up, she warned me that she'd see me after the game, intending to teach me a lesson. The word must have spread, because 5 minutes later she ran up to me.

"I didn't realize you were Julian's Sister. We're cool."

And with a sportsman-like pat to my back, she jogged off.

Eventually I moved to Vancouver and thought I had finally reclaimed my birth-name. It was at a house party in the middle of no-where North Van that I was proven wrong. Someone had recognized me as...you guessed it, Julian's Sister. The name Ariana once again forgotten.

The thing that probably freaked them out the most was the thought of my upcoming, drunken, 19th birthday. Dad had called Daniel in Victoria the week before, trying to persuade him to travel to North Van, to "help" me celebrate.

"Dad, we can't afford it. Julian and I are broke."

"Don't worry, I'm paying. Just get over there and keep an eye on your sister."

Minutes later, the call came from Daniel.

"Julian and I thought we might come to Vancouver for your birthday!"

It would be their first visit in over a year. I had a sudden burst of insight.

"Dad's paying for this, isn't he?"

That night, at the bar, I had one brother watching from the table, and one from the edge of the dance floor. After a few songs, they would alternate. One would guard our drinks as the other would dance over, wedging himself between me and whichever guy got too close.

Now that we're all older, I have to put up with them constantly hitting on my friends. If the opposite were to happen, I'm sure they would find a suitable bathroom-prison somewhere.

 Preferably not this one.

In the end, there is a workable balance between the perks and the disadvantages to being brought up with older, insanely protective men--just as there is to being brought up Biagi.