It was a good one, but not the best I’ve had. In my day I’ve napped some epic naps. Some glorious naps. I’m in fact so fond of naps that I think they should always be described using the same words one would use to boast of a victory on a battlefield. Use words like “terrific,” and “monumentous,” and “unprecedented.” Imagine a hardy barbarian sitting in a tavern, recounting how many heads he’d cleaved, how many villages he’d plundered, treasures he’d found. Only about naps instead, and of how many sheep he’d counted, and of how he woke up refreshed but not groggy.
For a second there I was so glad, so proud, to have taken that nap that I wished I was tired right now. Often in life it’s the things that we don’t get very often that we relish the most. After a few weeks with nothing to do, weekends just aren’t that exciting. The principle is that, since we don’t get _ very often, it’s that much better when we have it. We savor it like the moment right after an amazing interception, because half of the event’s splendor is the rarity. There are, of course, many exceptions to this rule. Christmas would be great if it happened every day. Candy is just as tasty even with the Halloween night stomach ache. Masturbation. Ah, sweet, sweet masturbation…
The Nap we can thus see is a magical creature. The nap I took the other day was a Sunday Afternoon Nap. Perhaps you’re familiar with that variety. I love the Sunday Afternoon Nap because it’s what makes Sundays what they are. They’re your real day of rest that, conveniently enough, come right after Saturday which is your day on the move. The Sunday Afternoon Nap happens because one, like a fool, always wakes up too early on Sunday. No matter what time that was, it was too early. So after a few hours of lazing around, you flop down on the couch or back into bed and let sleep, fabulous sleep, take you. The Sunday Afternoon Nap is but one example of the types of naps that happen because they understand perfectly how your day works. But here’s the thing: The Sunday Afternoon Nap is always great, even if you get it every week. In High School, when it wasn’t lacrosse season, I took afterschool naps before starting my homework. They were great. And they were great every single day. The nap has this power to be good every single time as long as you believe in it. Like Tinkerbell (if she were a hooker).
Which brings us to a very important point, as important as not feeding Gremlins after midnight (or giving Scrunchface liquor): naps may not be interrupted. Your nap is a part of you. Stopping it early is like going to the bathroom and then getting up halfway through and leaving - it just ain’t healthy. You know in those sci-fi plots where the person is inside a computer or someone else’s coma or something, and if you wake him up too early his mind will just stay there and he’ll die? Like that - all those stories are just a metaphor for naps. Never, ever, ever wake someone up from a nap unless they’ve asked you to.
Society doesn’t have much place for naps these days. I’m not sorry about that. I’d be very angry if all of America had siestas at 1-3pm and I couldn’t get my Slurpee then if I wanted it. I just find it a little sad that once you get home from work there really isn’t time to fit in a little snooze before dinner. But I guess that’s the price we pay to have 24-hour Slurpee availability and all of the other wonders of living in a superpower. By the time you’ve built your life up and gotten it to a point that you can have a daily nap you’re ready to retire. So damn the old, huh? They say that youth is wasted on the young, right? Well naps are wasted on the old!
All of this just goes to show that life goes steadily downhill after you turn 6. Before that, you can play with toys all you want and you’re required to take a nap every single day in school. And on top of that, you don’t have abstract thinking yet, so anything outside of your field of vision actually just doesn’t exist to you! Sigh.