Friday, December 11, 2009

he's been payin' all the bills for years.

In my teenage years I didn't much care for sleep.  I was often spotted using Warren Zevon's words; "I'll sleep when I'm dead."  I rarely took a nap on purpose, and I definitely used sleep as a means of escape from illness or as an excuse to get out of something.

Converse to that, I have always loved to stay in bed.  Not necessarily to sleep more, but to just lay there and drift in and out, listening to whatever was going on in the next room or upstairs.  At sleep-overs it was a means of finding out what someone's parents liked to watch in the mornings, or seeing if my friend was an early or late riser.  I wake up at a reasonable time, usually, but I have been known to stare my friends down until they are finally back in the land of the living.  Sometimes it's too hard to tell if that trick works, since the person always eventually wakes up (everybody wakes up sometimes, even certain coma patients.)  The hard part is deciding if you were actually staring for two hours, or if it only felt like it.

Part of my aversion to sleep was drawn from my susceptibility to snoring.  If all of the correct stars align (positioning, level of congestion, level of stress, drunkenness, &c.), then I will surely set up shop at a lumber mill that night.  (That's a clever way of saying "sawin' logs," which is a funny way of saying "snoring."  I would like to apply for ten points, please.)  Lately I have decided that if I end up snoring, you can just wake me up and make me sleep somewhere else.  I definitely won't stop snoring if you just wake me up, though.  I'll just go back to sleep, guys, it's not like I can control my breathing while I'm unconscious.  Also, Lately I've been grinding my teeth, which also helps to prevent snoring (a double edged sword; my jaw hurts).

But all of this has only acted to keep me from understanding the joy of naps.  With all of my friends in the middle of finals, napping seems to be a highly desired event right now.  One which I have been taking full advantage of, and even really loving lately.  Sometimes you've just gotta take a break, you know?  When did it become so fun?  Is it the cold, maybe?  The only time until recently when I have really liked napping this much was when I lived in my dad's basement junior and senior year, and the sun was going down around 4 o'clock (early spring), and would shine in through my egress window's blinds, into my room just before it was eclipsed by my neighbor's house.  Under no other circumstances did I really volunteer for a nap.  Sun naps or no naps.  "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

But then, one day not too long ago, I told someone (at 9 pm) that I needed a nap.  He responded "I don't think they're called naps this late at night."  I used my sass and said, "Everything is a nap if you wake up from it."  I got a laugh.  Then I started to think about naps more.  Then, I started to nap more.  And, as if all you ever need to do to really love something is try it with an open mind, I'm a napper now.  If I didn't have so much to do this evening, I might take a nap!  But, I've neglected my dishes for far too long, and last night I took a (very long) bath.  Time to clean that shit.

I know I use a lot of parenthesis.  I do it in real life, too, you just can't see them coming out of my mouth.
What are your thoughts on napping?