The Pie-Tin Nap Trick

I'm a big believer in the power of naps. Well, hang on... Maybe not so much when I was a kid. I remember going to bed at like 6:00 while I heard my friends outside playing and the sun still hung bright in the sky. Parents have the dumbest rules some times.

But I digress. In college, I couldn't even begin my daily studies until I'd napped, usually put to sleep by some God-awful, boring text book.  Of course, that may've been due to the previous night's late partying, but that's a story for another time.

Awesome author Ray Bradbury was a big proponent of napping, claiming it helped to boost his creativity. President Ronald Reagan loved naps. In fact, I think he might've mastered how to nap with his eyes open. Sometimes he fell asleep amongst his cabinet members and always wanted to "sleep on it" before making any decisions. Props to the Prez for mastering the art of napping anywhere and in front of anyone.

But naps are funny. I've found that increments of 45 minutes work best for me. Anything longer or shorter just makes me feel groggier. Bradbury claimed that short naps of five to 15 minutes were the best.

My wife's great grandfather came up with his own style of super-naps. And it's either an act of genius or insanity, I haven't yet quite decided.

He'd take a pie tin, place it on the floor next to the bed or couch and hold a metal spoon over it, his fist hovering above the pie tin. He'd fall asleep, still gripping the spoon, and when he'd zonk out, he'd release the spoon into the tin.

Yow! I don't know about you guys, but that's a sound I'd hate to wake up to, the sudden clatter jolting me awake. Or thrusting me into a heart attack. And it seems like great Grandpa may've just fallen asleep for a few seconds. Is that a long enough nap to re-kick-start your day?

Yet...and yet...there's a certain bit of undeniable certainty about great Grandpa's method of madness. You can be assured that you fall asleep. And you certainly don't over-sleep. It's a fool-proof plan tucked all cozy like into the nappy edges of ingenuity.

Unless your spoon misses the pie tin. But, hey, cheaper than an alarm clock!

As I said, naps are funny. It's been proven that naps are an effective combatant to corporate stress. Which might explain why I STILL dream about having a bed in my office at my last job. But consequently, I've never known a company that would applaud such on-the-job activities. 

"Smithers, where's Jones, dammit?"

"Ah, he's taking his daily constitutional, sir."

"What? I thought he moved his bowels at ten this morning!"

"No sir, that was his daily bowel constitutional. He's taking his early afternoon napping constitutional."

"Hah! Good man, that Jones! Make sure he gets a raise! And tell him to only work four days a week from now on!"

A relatively recent study at the Kyorin University School of Medicine and the University of Tokushima School of Medicine found that a 3 1/2-hour nap in the middle of a worker's shift would help reduce fatigue more than four pots of black coffee. Okay, I'm all for napping, but a 3 1/2 hour nap? That's more Z's than I log in any given night! 

And yet, when I was forced into naps as a kid and into kindergarten, I couldn't ever do it. Go figure.

Cats have got one thing right, I gotta say. These cool cats sleep 12 to 16 hours a day. Dayum! That's more like a daily coma! So cats' waking hours probably seem like the unusual part of their lives for them, the opposite for humans. Which is odd that short naps are called "cat naps." 

Another term for a short nap is the ol' "power nap." Which seems kinda like an oxymoron to me. I would think that the one Japanese worker's 3 1/2 nap should be considered a power nap moreso than a ten to twenty minute one, right? There's POWER in higher numbers!

Recovery naps just don't work, at least for me. This is when you try to make up in the daytime what you lost the previous night in sleep. Yeah, right. Tell it to my prostate.

Then we have what is called a "proactive nap." These are defined as getting a nap in before you expect to lose sleep during the forthcoming night. This seems kinda counterproductive to me, an endless rabbit hole of chasing sleep that you just *know* ain't gonna happen. I'd rather go down the bottomless Netflix rabbit hole.

Here's a good one: the "coffee nap." The definition is you drink a cup of coffee right before a nap. Huh. I also know a guy who's selling bridges in Brooklyn if anyone's interested after their coffee nap.

Finally, we have the "appetitive nap," thusly named because, well, these people enjoy napping. But I kinda think anyone who naps is doing so because they like napping. Did we really need a specially named nap for this?

The one nap the "nap experts (who are these people? Where do I sign up?)" failed to identify is what I call the "food coma nap." I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a highly effective napping experience. It started at Thanksgiving and has worked its way into my daily regimen. First...eat more than your stomach can allow. Second...pass out! It's that simple.

No matter your choice of nap styles, get to napping! Do it right now! Go nap! Nap like the wind!

I've always found that short stories are a good way to lull yourself into a nap, not too long and not too short, and hey! By coinkydink, I just happen to have written a short story collection. That's my book Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley: guaranteed to put you sleep! Pleasant dreams...