Dream Talk

I always knew that I do not snore in my sleep. :)
That was one certainty that gave me a sense of self-knowledge. I mean, women never accept that they snore even when they know they do. My mom never did until the time when my dad recorded her snoring one Sunday afternoon and gave her a tea-time present. Even then she denied it by saying that it was bad recording and what she heard was "the air" around the tape recorder. We must have lived in a torpedo prone area back then!
However I was blissfully unaware of a latent talent that I possess - Sleeptalking.
I do not know what is the Greek-Latin name for that disorder but I positively have it. It explains all the times when I used to wake up suddenly in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone laugh. My flatmate Shruti brought it to my kind attention a few days back. I did not believe her the first time but then one day she told me that I was talking about inverting some NMR tubes and wobbing up again. Then it seems I went on to consider frying the NMR tubes before using cherry tomatoes. All of this reminded me of a vaguely similar situation that I was in not long ago before I woke up. I had to accept that she could not have invented such a geeky situation all by herself ( although she is no short of a finance geek).
I think she should have just had a silent laugh and not told me about it for since then, I have not slept peacefully even a single day and what is even worse, when I actually did even for half an hour I ended up talking! It seems I talk to the entire post-grad room in my sleep. I have detailed conversations about weather and politics mixed with a lot of cooking!
Sometimes I laugh in my sleep and when she tells me that I did in the morning, I spend an awful amount of time wondering what was the joke that I heard in my dream.
It has changed my attitude towards wakefulness dramatically. While I am awake, I am so conscious of my thoughts now for the fear of talking about them at night that I have almost turned into a saint. I do not think evil thoughts for the fear of sounding evil in my sleep.
When I am in the middle of a dream soap sequence where I am the vamp who is about to send a stinger across the room, I shake myself awake to avoid talking about it.
We all have a really mean person inside. Someone who is good company when you know that your association is clandestine. Like when someone gets married and sends you their pictures and as you are admiring the colorful ladies all lined up beside the bride in their finery, the mean woman in you goes " Hmmph! The bride looks awfully fat!". You and the mean woman inside have your own wicked laugh!
Or when in your empty moments at your desk ( which are not essentially empty but are specially "vacated" because you are lazy) you dream about making it really big as a Chef or a Talk Show Host, which is completely out of sync from the job that your are currently busy procrastinating.
What if all of that is made public? What if everyone gets to know about the mean woman, the aspiring chef ( and dry cleaner) and the Grammy,the Oscar and the Pulitzer all in the same year?
So this sudden realization has turned off the day-dream mode that my mind used to run on. Now it is just real life, that too de-caffeinated , without the judgments.
Needless to say that I am under the influence of a perpetual jet-lag now. I take long coffee breaks and doze off at my desk when they leave me alone. At night I try and keep myself aware and try and wake up even at the hint of a dream sequence specially designed my the happy side of my Ego.
It is stressful. I hope we get a new house soon. Something that lets me babble without having to face it the next morning!! :D