Beware the sleep police

If one Virginia state legislator had his way, me and my kids would be in big trouble. The senator’s bill proposed the “Spaces such as the kitchen, living room, dining room and family room shall not be occupied for sleeping purchases.”
The senator was trying to protect the property owners who lived beside financially hard-pressed immigrants. The neighbors complained about three-bedroom houses with 15-16 cousins camping out all over the house. The bill did not say, “this is just for overflowing households,” it vaguely stated that other rooms “shall not be occupied for sleeping purposes.”
With that kind of law, our half-laundry/half bedroom would never have existed no matter how much it was needed when my sons were teenagers. At that time they could no longer amicably share one average-sized bedroom. They needed more space. The laundry room had enough space to hold a single bed, a dresser and the treasures of one son who stayed there until one brother went off to college. It was, however still obviously not a bedroom.
The senator’s bedroom law would also have kept my kids grandparents from ever sleeping on the fold-out couch in the living room. If they had, we all would have been awakened in the middle of the night by the bedroom police pounding down the door, “Open up! We know someone is sleeping in the living room.”
Following that barbaric awakening would be the trauma of watching grandma and grandpa, still in their jammies, being shackled and hauled off for (gasp!) the transgression of sleeping in the living room.
Pity our poor family sleepwalker who slept as he walked down the hall, through the kitchen and dining room before settling onto a couch or chair in the living room. Bells ringing, horns buzzing could not wake him, but the siren of the bedroom police would shatter all our sleep because he had slept in three rooms other than his bedroom.
My only response would be, “we tell him and tell him he has to sleep in his bedroom.”
“He’ll have to wear a monitor at night, Ma’am. Sleeping in all these other rooms is forbidden.” I wonder, would he also wear a brain wave monitor to verify he was asleep and not just having a midnight snack?
No one ever officially slept in the kitchen, but there were times when my babies did nap in their carriers as I made bread. And one toddler didn’t care where the bed was, when the sandman came it was drop and sleep wherever the need hit, even the kitchen floor.
As hard as it is to get a toddler to nap, I don’t care what the bedroom law says, the bedroom police would have one mad momma if they had arrived, siren whining for that infraction. I practiced what my mother preached, “let sleeping children lie.” “Who cares if they are asleep on the couch, the floor or in their bed? As long as they are asleep, leave’em alone.”
I am sure that protecting property values is important. However nothing triggers my protective spirit as much as my family’s need for sleep — even if achieving it offends the propriety and property values of a Virginia senator.