Napping

This week I have begun a personal campaign to give up napping. Napping is fine every once in while, but recently I had been taking upwards of four naps a week and it became apparent that I was no different from a common baby. To be honest, I didn’t nap nearly this much when I was younger. Back then naps were anathema to me, and once when I was about three I remember my daycare supervisor having to send me downstairs to play while all the other kids slept. I was the only one in the basement and there wasn’t anything to do down there except dick around with a few jankety toys, so I thought I was being punished. This was very confusing, because why should I be disciplined for not being tired? What if my supervisor forgot about me down there? All I could do was just sit quietly at the bottom of the stairs and cry and cry.

What Ive realized about napping is that when your body becomes accustomed to naps, it expects them every day. Even if you get seven or eight hours of sleep, youll still begin to feel a little drowsy right around 5 or 6 in the evening, and theres not much you can do about it but curl up in a little ball in the corner of your bed like the pathetic infant you are. You may as well wear some diapers and forget how to shit in the toilet while youre at it, because by this point youre basically just a ridiculous baby. Then when you wake up from your nap, you have no idea what time of the day it is or whether or not youve overslept or what your teacher has been prattling on about for the past forty minutes. Have we really been reduced to this? I say its time to start toughening up and acting like adults for once and actually remain completely conscious throughout the entire day, no matter how little sleep you got in the nighttime. But Im still going to keep a regular juice time, because if I dont get my treat of juice and crackers at 2:40 in the afternoon I become really crabby untill dinner.

20 thoughts on “Napping

  1. OK, OK… I see where you come from with the nap hating. However, I enjoy naps (as you know I take them frequently) and feel that if one has time to take them, then why not? As a kid I never liked them and, much like you, was forced to play alone in an attic when I wasn’t tired, but now I feel that I have earned the right to nap, three to four times a day in fact. Oh yeah, and you are a whore if you don’t get your snack… 🙂

  2. Sleep is a waste of time and I will get as little of it as possible until I stop being a logical human being and constantly get mistaken for a mean cunt.

    Naps? psssshhh…. that’s all.

  3. I like naps from time to time, but I generally agree with Anupa. Sleeping is such a terrible waste of time. An enjoyable waste of time, but still a waste of time.

  4. I recently refound this site. I’m glad to see you’re still…I want to say writting, but that’s not quite right. Anyway, Mark and I read most of your musing and were quite amused. I’d love to see an update soon.

  5. I’m not even going to attempt to make a humorous post, as it is emminently obvious that that is not my gift or forte, in more ways than one. I’m actually going to do a serious post, even though it seems that is not really condoned on this message board. I am an American writer working abroad. I write for some magazines published by Conde Nast and some by American Express, as well as some other big publishers. As such I do a lot of writing. And reading. Often of important websites, like yours. But believe it or not, I also read a lot of other stuff. News, magazines, novels, etc.
    What I’m writing to say is I seriously think you’re an amazingly gifted comedic writer. And unless you’re playing some elaborate practical joke on all of us, and you’re really the lead writer for The Simpsons, I think you should try your hand at script-writing or humor writing (a la Dave Barry et al). You should take a class in television script/drama writing! Or just try your hand at writing something to be published–submit some writing in whatever field it is you have the hots for. I have a great lifestyle–I love what I do and I write really fun stuff, like travel and dining articles, arts and culture stories. Script writers, newspaper columnists and magazine contributors can make decent livings and a lot of them enjoy what they do– and you’ve absolutely got the talent to do that too. In fact, you’re funnier, and more satisfyingly funny, than a lot of stuff out there. You have a remarkable sensitivity to the humor in language and in everyday life. Don’t take it for granted, it’s a rare quality and you should share it with more people!

  6. I agree with our good friend CYM… but before you make the big times I would seriously appreciate some more posts sometime… please?

    Cheers from Nova Scotia.

  7. Eric, my dear… the CYM person is right, even if s/he is a construct of your own subconscious mind. Not that I at all suspect that 😉

    PLEASE keep writing. Keep the Little People and the old people (the Little old people) happy!

  8. Where have all the recent posts gone? I miss them 🙁 (Remembers the old post about people checking this site for updates and being disappointed on a consistent basis..)

  9. Sorry—I’m back again. I’ll try to make it up to everybody with some consistent updates. Thank you to everybody who left a comment. You are the wind beneath my wings—literally. I literally have two wings coming out of my sides and I have a machine that converts nice comments to wind, and when I stand on this machine and begin flapping my wings I can fly around for about thirty seconds before the wind dies and I have to sit down in my chair again with my useless wings, awaiting new comments which I can later convert to wind.

    CYM: Thanks—that comment makes me feel like a big man. I will try to use your comment as encouragement by having personalized underwear printed up with your comment printed on it. That way whenever I’m feeling down, I just have to pull down my pants and bend forward like an ostrich to remember that if I work hard, I can achieve my dreams.

    NickJ: As far as I know, all the old posts are in the archives. You should be able to find them all by clicking on that little picture of Mark Twain punching the shit out of a drunk.

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