Nightmares!
I am sure I have mentioned before that I am a dreamer, the definition being one who sleeps then dreams! I just realized a few minutes ago that its been a while since I had a nightmare:) Nightmares for me at one point in my life were a regular phenomenom, my parents were sure to hear me knock on their door in the middle of the night if the dream was particularly frightening. Dreams that were almost real were parent waking ones!:) Since I left home for boarding school when I was eleven I had that pleasure of parental comfort only during the holidays!
On days when the dreams were frightening but not a 'wake up mummy and daddy' level nightmare, if we were home my twin was sure to have me climb into bed with her and hear me whisper 'Toyin wake up I had a bad dream'. She would wake up for a few seconds and after pretending to sympathise with me would drop promptly back to sleep with the sleep elixir having a greater weight than Tomi's tale of horror. I should say the same happened when she had a bad dream! The only times we stayed awake was when the dreams were scary enough to keep us imagining terrible things and in NEPA induced darkness this was not difficult:)) Im sure NEPA caused enough nightmares all over the land. If a little child cannot be reassured that the shadows cast by his coat or clothes are not monsters by turning the lights on, he simply cant be reassured!
I guess my nightmares arose from my fear of the dark and NEPA did very little to help that. Also gruesome boarding house tales of Madam KoiKOI, Bushbabies, Ghosts, Jack the Ripper only heightened the fear response and since the tales were told in the evenings just before the 'lights out' bell was rung nightmares just had to happen. There were even cases of girls waking up in the middle of the night to see Madam KoiKoi posing besides their beds or Jack the Ripper running through the dorm. Thankfully my nightmares did not translate into real live dramas. For the uninitiated Madam KoiKoi was a female cook (the story differs depending on what female boarding school you attended) who had lost a leg and would go round on one leg in a red high heeled shoe looking for the other leg? Im not sure how the story ends but she had one leg and would hop around on it with her red shoe making the 'koi koi' sounds and thus she became Madam KoiKoi.
Also having numerous cousins who chose to tell ghoulish tales just before bedtime only fuelled the fire!
My last nightmare (meaning the one I can remember) took place when I was a house officer. I lived in a house surrounded by a bush which was pretty dense. The surroundings of my house are not the setting for the nightmare but it only made me more afraid of what could be hidden in the bushes! I woke up in a fright after one particular nightmare and immediately hissed and turned around and slept immediately. I had to much work to do at this hospital to waste precious sleep time worrying about the nightmare usually I would get up turn the lights on if NEPA was kind and spend half the night awake, but that day my body was too tired to get out of bed and switch on the light and stay awake worrying that if I dropped back to bed the nightmare would continue. I needed the sleep too much to deprive myself of it! That was the end of Nightmares for a long while!
On days when the dreams were frightening but not a 'wake up mummy and daddy' level nightmare, if we were home my twin was sure to have me climb into bed with her and hear me whisper 'Toyin wake up I had a bad dream'. She would wake up for a few seconds and after pretending to sympathise with me would drop promptly back to sleep with the sleep elixir having a greater weight than Tomi's tale of horror. I should say the same happened when she had a bad dream! The only times we stayed awake was when the dreams were scary enough to keep us imagining terrible things and in NEPA induced darkness this was not difficult:)) Im sure NEPA caused enough nightmares all over the land. If a little child cannot be reassured that the shadows cast by his coat or clothes are not monsters by turning the lights on, he simply cant be reassured!
I guess my nightmares arose from my fear of the dark and NEPA did very little to help that. Also gruesome boarding house tales of Madam KoiKOI, Bushbabies, Ghosts, Jack the Ripper only heightened the fear response and since the tales were told in the evenings just before the 'lights out' bell was rung nightmares just had to happen. There were even cases of girls waking up in the middle of the night to see Madam KoiKoi posing besides their beds or Jack the Ripper running through the dorm. Thankfully my nightmares did not translate into real live dramas. For the uninitiated Madam KoiKoi was a female cook (the story differs depending on what female boarding school you attended) who had lost a leg and would go round on one leg in a red high heeled shoe looking for the other leg? Im not sure how the story ends but she had one leg and would hop around on it with her red shoe making the 'koi koi' sounds and thus she became Madam KoiKoi.
Also having numerous cousins who chose to tell ghoulish tales just before bedtime only fuelled the fire!
My last nightmare (meaning the one I can remember) took place when I was a house officer. I lived in a house surrounded by a bush which was pretty dense. The surroundings of my house are not the setting for the nightmare but it only made me more afraid of what could be hidden in the bushes! I woke up in a fright after one particular nightmare and immediately hissed and turned around and slept immediately. I had to much work to do at this hospital to waste precious sleep time worrying about the nightmare usually I would get up turn the lights on if NEPA was kind and spend half the night awake, but that day my body was too tired to get out of bed and switch on the light and stay awake worrying that if I dropped back to bed the nightmare would continue. I needed the sleep too much to deprive myself of it! That was the end of Nightmares for a long while!
I see you are very imaginative.@Madam Koikoi,LOL!
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