Good Night

I hate taking naps.

I think I have not regularly taken naps since I was a baby. I do remember playing by myself while my parents took naps on a weekend, but I do not remember joining them in slumber. 

My husband takes naps. Long afternoon naps. When we were first married, I tried to keep him from sleeping. Gradually, I gave in to the inevitable. If I wanted to go for a Sunday drive, he had to sleep at least for an hour after lunch, first. Even on weekdays, after lunch he lies down for ten or fifteen minutes before going back to work. 

I, however, consider a nap a waste of daylight. Nights were made for sleeping, and the dark lasts long enough, especially in fall and winter. It doesn't matter how tired I am, how much my eyelids long to close and give in to oblivion, I fight it during the day. I will get up, walk around, sit back down, and fight off sleep again.

Sometimes, I will lay my head on the table or the desk. In such an awkward position, after five minutes I wake up and continue with my day. Yesterday, I did that at my desk, while wrestling with the trickle of internet service and waiting for a web page to download and unfold before me. 

After a while, I was confused. I opened my eyes. Where was I? What were all those books? What time was it? I lifted my head from my arms. My neck was stiff, my hands dead lumps as they tried to move the mouse to see the screen clock. My feet wouldn't respond and pain began to radiate from the needles that were traversing them. My hands began feeling again, a tintillating cold as feeling came back to them, useless while the needles transfixed them, as well. I glanced at the screen clock. Impossible. An hour. An hour lost from my day. What I had planned to do remained that, plans. But there was no longer time to put them in action. 

I sat up and felt dumb. Dumb as in stupid, lacking in wits. Sleepiness had not gone from me, but I was not awake, either. As soon as the needles left my feet, I got up. The world moved with me. There was nothing I could do to stop it. My head was moving in one direction, my body in another. I was not coordinated. There was a metallic taste in my mouth, and a sourness in my hearing. The afternoon sounds were harsh and grating. 

I made some coffee, thinking that would help me; it does in the morning. It was a mistake. It simply made my stomach petulant, a distaste rising as I attempted to do abandoned chores. Slowly, the world began to move with me, but my grumpiness remained. Nothing would bring back the lost hour I had spent in sleep. How some people feel refreshed after an afternoon nap, my husband included, is a mystery. I simply felt like a hall rug after a rainy day with feet scraping off the rain and debris of outdoors. Give me a good night's sleep and keep your naps.