This issue has rested heavy upon my soul for some time, and I felt it was finally time to bring it to light. I know we’re all well educated on how to handle common zombie issues. After all, who hasn’t seen prime shows like The Walking Dead, Shaun of the Dead, and the all important and highly educational Zombieland?

If you haven’t, do yourself a favor, and pick those puppies up. You’ll be better prepared for the upcoming zombiepocalypse that’s surely just around the bend. It’s immanent, after all. Right?

In the meantime, we have a more present threat. And it’s just as dangerous. In fact, more so.

Sleepwalkers.

No, don’t laugh. Don’t snicker at me. I live with one: my son. I was one myself. I come from a long line of them, in fact. Sleepwalkers are a clear and present danger to your sanity, while zombies are, for now, a danger of the future. However, there are clear similarities in how to handle these real and serious threats.

Before I divulge my secrets, I feel I must remind you, I am no doctor. I am not dispensing medical advice. I’m informing on how to deal with sleepwalkers as one would deal with a zombie. Clear? Okay, moving on now.

1. Just as zombies are mindless automatons driven by a single need, the need to feed. Sleepwalkers are oh, so similar. Sleepwalkers have one purpose. They seek to deprive you of sleep, and therefore, your sanity, and by association, your brain function. Not so different from a zombie, right? When my son, at two in the morning, declares in a screaming voice “It’s okay, I’m a car.” over and over at the top of the stairs, which mind you have amazing acoustic properties, I can literally feel my brain cells melting.
2. Zombies are well known for their agitation when deprived of food. Sleepwalkers are similarly agitated when deprived of sleep. This may sound counter-intuitive. After all, they are the ones up and around, running about, right? However, you court your doom if you awaken a sleepwalker. In my experience they blame you entirely for their predicament. For instance, if they chose to change their clothes in their sleep and you woke them up in the process? You will bear the brunt of a level 20 screaming attack for changing their clothes without their knowledge. Understand, it is never ‘them’, it is always ‘you’. If they find themselves on the couch downstairs, it’s ‘why did *you* bring me down here!’. Usually at decibel levels you’d prefer not to broach without ear protection. Waking a sleeper is courting your doom. DOOM!
3. Then there are the more subtle attacks. Sometimes zombies are simply sauntering by, or stuck in a ditch. They can’t get to you, but they scare the bejeeus out of you nonetheless. Sleepwalkers share this uncanny ability. Take the time we heard a shuffling upstairs, and then couldn’t find our son for a good five minutes. We knew he was in the house, and duh, sleepwalking, but where? Eventually my husband found him hunkered down in a corner, staring off into the distance, shielding his body with his arms, mumbling to himself. Before my husband could carefully redirect my son to his bed, our child said, “The man, he’s in the house.” He shuddered, and then continued. “He’ll find me soon. I can hear him coming.” Um yeah, WALKERS ARE SPOOKY! Enough said. We didn’t sleep well that night, draining yet again more useful brain cells. Kiddo laughed off the story the next morning, while we were left with the creeps. T’aint fair at all, I tell you!
4. Sometimes you know you’re sleeping right next to a horde of zombies in the barn next door and you can hear their low groans at night, keeping you awake. Sleepwalking children sometimes find it great fun to come and crash in your bed, draping themselves over you, because after all parents make a wonderful pillow, right? Have I mentioned sleepwalkers also talk in their sleep? They can hold entire one-sided conversations. However, the worst are the out of the blue, full on, Jabba the Hutt belly laughs. Those scare the ever-loving shit out of me, because suddenly I’m expecting to be dropped into a pit with a Rancor to fend for my life. Yeah, stop laughing at me, you sadistic bastards.
5. We all know zombies have insatiable appetites. So do sleepwalkers, when pressed. My father-in-law, while on a diet, once awoke in the middle of the night and found himself in the kitchen with a glass of milk in one hand and a fully constructed, half-eaten sandwich in the other. This answered his question about why his diet had him gaining, not losing weight.

I hope I’ve impressed upon you the clear and present dangers we face today from sleepwalkers, and how similar they are to tomorrow’s zombies. Now, I have for you Candice’s rules for dealing with sleepwalkers:

1. Never awaken a sleepwalker! (Do this and court DOOM!)
2. Get them back to bed as gently and quickly as possible.
3. Never argue with a sleepwalker. (Yes, they talk!  And yell, and scream…) If they are yelling and blaming you, accept all culpability for the situation. Even if they have underwear on their head. Somehow. Accept it, leave it there, and move on.
4. Get yourself back to sleep as quickly as possible, minimizing the sleepwalker’s collateral damage.
5. Tell the sleepwalker all about their exploits the next day. They will either vehemently deny, or will laugh hysterically. Either way, you’ll feel better for sharing, seeking their shocked expression, and knowing that yes, they were completely unaware during the entire process.

I’m afraid that’s all I have for now. If you have your own advice or tips and tricks, feel free to share them. Goodness knows, those of us afflicted can always use more aid in dealing with this ever-present and growing threat.

Stay safe, my friends!