MOULTRIE, Ga. –

 I’m amused at how some companies try to personalize promotional emails. The subject line makes it sound like we’re old fishing buddies … like we doubled dated back in high school. 

So today when I opened my emails I was greeted with: “Dwain, fall asleep instantly .. and stay asleep.”

Wow! I hadn’t long gotten out of bed. 

My first thought was that someone had come up with “Sermons in a jug.” 

Just kidding. I’ve heard some good sermons lately. Some of them from preachers. But I was taken back to my childhood when I had trouble concentrating on some of the sermons I endured. They were mostly hellfire and brimstone that could have been summed up on a sticky note. Be bad, and you go to Hell. Be good, and you go to Heaven. Now let’s sing “Just As I Am” twice and go home and have dinner.

Of course when I would so easily doze off on those rough-cut heart pine pews, I would suddenly be awakened by a pounding fist on the pulpit or a splinter stabbing my posterior. 

Now this particular promoter had a concoction that is designed to help you sleep (knock you out) and keep you asleep. I think we already had some of those. They are called sleeping pills.

Now sleeping pills scare me. Several years back I read where some people would take Ambien, and during their sleep would get up and cook and clean house and would not remember it the next morning. I laughed at those reports. I should not have.

You see my wife and I had some prescribed Ambien. She would take a half, and I would take a whole one if needed.

 One night when I couldn’t sleep, I went to take my whole pill but poured into my hand a pill and a half. I stared at them for a second and then said, “What the heck.” I popped them both. Again, I should not have.

The next morning my wife asked me what in the world was wrong with me during the night. I told her I was completely fine, that I had a good night’s sleep. As it turned out, she found me walking around in the backyard at 3 a.m. I had no recollection of it. 

That event scared the heck out of me. Right away I knew that I was a one-Ambien man.

So I got to thinking about what could have gone wrong in that one-and-a-half-pill moment. I might have put on a cape and flew off the roof. I might have hot-wired the car and drove downtown in my underwear. (Actually, I don’t know how to hot wire a car, but maybe you can do things under the influence of Ambien that you can’t do under the influence of fried chicken.)

I ran through numerous scenarios. They all could have eventually involved a jury of my peers.

The promotion said I could fall asleep immediately and stay asleep. Fall asleep immediately? I had a flashback to the school bully. Apparently he really didn’t put his pants on just like me. And his pants were much bigger than mine. 

Now I’m thinking there may be a fine line between falling asleep immediately and being unconscious. I think there’s also a fine line between archaeology and grave robbing. That really doesn’t have anything to do with a sleep-aid commentary. It’s just something I wanted to throw out there for future pontification. 

In retrospect, I’m wondering how my Ambien incident would have played out if I had cleaned the house instead of wandering around in the backyard?

(Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer. Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)