One night, when I was just a little girl, I stayed up past my bedtime. Now, this is a heinous crime for a eight-year-old, which would have undoubtedly granted me either the death sentence or a long time out. Knowing this, I was fearful for my life when I heard a scuffle from outside of my bedroom door shortly after I had sneezed. I tried to muffle it. I tried to hold it in. But that sneeze shot right out, and my heart dropped into my stomach as I prepared myself for that door to open and for my mom to come barreling in with her finger wagging and voice raised. I awaited the bombardment with closed eyes and laid as still as I possibly could, pretending to be asleep. When nothing happened, and I realized that my life had been spared, I began to wonder if my parents had thought I was asleep during the sneeze, snoozing away like I was supposed to be. Then, a bigger issue plagued my mind.. Can a human sneeze when they're asleep, or is that a bodily function that only occurs when you're awake?
This question sent me into a tailspin, challenging every idea I had ever known to be true. I looked back at my entire eight years of life, attempting to remember a time where I had sneezed when I was asleep, but became frustrated and hopeless when I realized that I wouldn't remember sneezing if I were unconscious. I laid awake, with my stomach churning in confusion, trying to find a solution to the problem that had just arose in my previously simple life.
The past nine years have been quite the challenge, considering that this important question has been plaguing my mind. All I have ever wanted since that late night, where I stayed up a whole 36 minutes past my bedtime of 7pm, is to find the answer. Other questions have popped into my mind, such as whether or not cats fart, and if there's a correlation between ingesting large amounts of chicken nuggets and mortality. But, needing to know if sneezing occurs when a person is asleep is a problem that has far outweighed my need to know those other things.
The solution? I plan to hold an experiment where I have numerous volunteer subjects allow me to watch them sleep, and I will carefully observe for any signs of sneezing. This will be a very tedious and tiring task, but I am determined to find the answer to the inquiry that has been burning on my mind for years. I will spend every waking moment in the lab to finally feel the satisfaction of knowing whether or not a human can sneeze while asleep. Or maybe I'll just google it.
