Rant #1,647: Take a Nap

We all sleep, or at least we do unless we have insomnia.

There are some days I can't sleep, and there have been a couple of times that I have written this column really, really early in the morning--earlier than I am doing it now, at 4:25 a.m., even earlier than that--to help make me tired so I can go to sleep.

Today was not one of those days, but I can tell you that later today--after a tough day at work--I probably will take a nap later on, after dinner, while watching TV.

As I get older, this has been my pattern. I simply cannot be intrigued by just anything on TV anymore, and if it does not engage my brain, well, I fall asleep for a half hour, an hour, an hour and a half, and my longest naps last about two hours or so.

After a long and tough day at work--or a long and tough day at home--I find that I need these naps to almost, in a funny way, supplement my regular sleeping, which begins at 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and at varying times on Friday and Saturday nights.

I do not have a sleeping disorder--I was tested for that a while back--it is just that I need a short snooze to keep myself going.

As I get older, I am starting to take after my father, who does the same thing. He has done this for as long as I can remember, and it hasn't hurt him one bit.

As much as we like to think we are different from our parents, as we get older, we find that we really aren't that much different.

I take after my mother as I am an early riser, and I take after my father because I seem to need naps to keep myself going.

And I find my son is, very slowly, starting to take after me.

We still watch TV together on occasion--professional wrestling, which is on five days a week now--and I invariably conk out when I am watching these shows. They are repetitious, the story lines are the same that they were 50 years ago, just with different characters, yet the shows are somewhat engaging.

Well, like yesterday, I took a good hour nap while watching WWE NXT with my son.

He did not take a nap last night, but there are plenty of times when I have fallen asleep, wake up, and see that he is knocked out just like his old man was a few minutes earlier.

Such is the life of a working man, and he is working six days a week now--four hours a day, so still part-time--so he, too, is tired.

He used to laugh at me when I dozed off, but he doesn't laugh as hard anymore. I warned him that this was going to happen, and it did, just like I said it would.

My wife does not nap--when she is asleep, she is asleep for the duration--and I have no idea about my daughter, but I will bet that my first born naps too. It seems to be engrained in my family's sleep history, on my father's side. I don't think my mother is much of a napper, but as I said, my father certainly is.

I guess anything that keeps you awake and alert during the day is fine, even if it involves sleeping.

Take a nap. It is better than taking a pill.

To relax, I would rather take a pillow than a pill, anyway.