Sleepwalking Alarm

Still tired from traveling to California, Doug and I went to bed between 9:30 and 10 on the first full day that we were in The Golden State.  Sometime around 11:30 that night a loud knocking woke me from a dead sleep.  At first, I thought that it was the recurring dream that I had had about someone knocking.  Many times, in the past, I had jumped out of my bed, ran to the door and found no one there.  Thus, my first reaction upon hearing the knocking was to go back to sleep, but then I heard it again.  That's when I realized that it wasn't a dream and ran to Doug's bed.  When he wasn't there, I got worried and bolted to the door.  Doug was standing outside the door thrilled that I finally answered.  

After calming down from the excitement, Doug explained that as far as he could tell he had gotten up to go the bathroom but walked out our room door instead.  He didn't wake up until the door shut and locked.  He had tried knocking, but I didn't hear him because of my white noise machine.  He really needed to use the bathroom so he decided that the only thing he could do was go downstairs and use the one near the lounge.  He tried to be inconspicuous as there were two wedding parties in the lobby, but since he was shirtless and barefoot, he assumed that several people noticed.  I was surprised that no one said anything to him, but maybe they thought he was homeless or one of the drunk partygoers from the Butter & Egg Festival.  Doug returned to our room and had just about given up knocking to sleep on the floor outside our room when I answered.  He was definitely very happy to be back in bed.

After I got over the shock and embarrassment of the situation, I started to panic.  Doug had slept walk quite a few times during our marriage, but only in our house.  I had told him that recently he had slept walked out to the kitchen while I was still up watching television.  I am not sure that he believed me then, but he did now.  Since I didn't want him to get locked out again, and I didn't want to stay up all night worrying about him, I asked him to please sleep with a shirt on and a room key in his pocket.  He had no problem doing either.  I also turned on the bathroom light, put a row of hangers on the back of the door to act as a sleepwalking alarm, placed his suitcase in front of it and tied a bag around the door handle. Before I could finally fall asleep, I even ordered a door stop alarm that would wake anyone up if stepped on.  I am happy to report that there were no more sleepwalking incidents after that, and we both slept very well for the rest of the trip.