The Key West Citizen is delivered early each morning to our motorhome campsite. The first thing I read is that day’s creative weather description, even though when you live in the equivalent of a heavy-duty foil structure you pretty much always know the weather.
Noisy? Rain. Rockin’? Wind. One hundred seventeen degrees? Florida.
But one morning an article caught my attention even before I could check on whether we were due for a “slight chance of winter” (temps in the mid-60s) or “happy little sprinkles” (scattered showers.)
The brief article was about naps and how science has once again confirmed what some of us already knew: naps are good for us.
Here are the highlights:
- Naps are great
- There’s nothing wrong with nappers
- There is something wrong with people who don’t nap
Actually, I made up number three , but I’m pretty sure it would’ve been included in a longer article.
Which naps are best?
That naps are a good thing isn’t new. For years experts and worn-out moms have praised the virtues of catnaps and short power naps; those brief episodes when an exhausted, used up, zero-battery-remaining person nods off, then jolts awake and ta-da! They’re UP, wide-eyed and alert, ready to parent, party, plow the back forty or all of the above.
But there’s good news in this new news. The article went beyond power naps, recommending long, two-hour deep-slumber naps.
The kind where you wake up with the bedspread pattern etched into the length of your body, in a confused fog, wondering “Am I late for work or algebra? And was that just a really bad dream or am I actually married with teenagers?” That’s my kind of nap.
Non-napping friends believe I nap because I get up early. Nope. I get up early so that I can nap. To a professional napper such as myself, the perfect day is one that starts early enough to squeeze in two naps. That’s because napping runs in my family.
Mom naps vs Dad naps
“I’m not sleeping I’m just resting my eyes,” my mom would say, sitting upright in the passenger seat. If one of us kids acted up, she could reach back and give the closest one a dope slap without even opening her eyes. She was a catnapper.
My father was a deep-sleep napper. He’d spend Sunday afternoon sprawled on the sofa watching the ballgame, four pounds of newspaper sections sliding off his chest onto the floor. He could nap through a Hail Mary pass. Or a screechy fight between his teenage daughters, while their mother yelled from the kitchen, “For God’s sake, can you two at least not fight on Sunday?”
Yet, if someone switched off the game his eyes snapped open and he’d say “Put it back.” (Allow me to add that this was in an era when dope slaps were common — if you acted like a dope — and, when a parent said, “put it back,” you did.)
Non-nappers?
It’s hard for me to even imagine that some people can’t nap since naps come so naturally to me, but I have a friend of 30 years who insists that she canNOT nap. Ever. No matter how tired she is, or how sick, if it’s daytime sleep just doesn’t happen. Apparently light, guilt and the faintest of sounds prevent her from drifting off.
However, pro that I am, I’ve napped through earthquakes in Japan, hurricanes Gloria and Bob and in the backseat of a station wagon parked on the infield of the Bridgehampton Racetrack during qualifying races. Not to mention most of the labor-and-delivery process of our second child. It’s a gift, and my non-napping friend who frequently catches me mid-siesta says, “I just wish I could nap like that.”
So, then one day I ran to her house mid-afternoon, unannounced, and … (you know what’s coming next, right?) Yep. But because I’m such a good friend, I pretended I don’t notice the tell-tale pattern of chenille across her face, or that trail of dried drool.
But to all you other secret nappers out there, it’s O.K. You’re O.K. Naps are a good thing! You can come out of the closet now. Though, sometimes a closet is a good place to nap. Been there, done that, too.
Naps & Nappers
“Naps & Nappers” is the latest post in Joanne Sherman’s “Off the Cuff” column. Look for new posts on Tuesdays, every other week or so. Follow this link to catch up on any you’ve missed.
A former Associate Editor of the Shelter Island Reporter, Joanne has won multiple awards for her humor columns in both the Suffolk Times and the Reporter. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Southern Living, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle and other publications. She wrote a column, “Can We Talk”, in Toastmaster, a magazine for Toastmasters International, and was an award-winning humorist/commentator for WPBX radio in Southampton. She and her husband, Hoot Sherman, live on Shelter Island.
