Poking the Bear
I am not a napper. I never have been. Even during my worst bouts of insomnia, where I average three hours of sleep a night for months at a time, I am the least nap-capable human being you will ever meet.
I try to nap. Really. Who wants to roam around the world like a lethargic zombie-sloth? Have you ever gone to the stupormarket under those conditions? I emerge, blinking: wallet flattened, decisions ridiculous. And speaking of decisions ridiculous, these sleepless conditions are usually when it seems like a really good idea to give myself a haircut. With cuticle scissors. Or kitchen shears.
While I am clunking around in this predisposed state, some well-meaning and amused individual will suggest that things might work better after I get some rest — usually while watching me attempt to wash dishes or assemble a meal without accidentally delivering everything to the floor. It feels profoundly soul-moving at these moments, this idea of laying down my weary bones. Tantalizing, even.
Sometimes the suggestion is made because everything I say seems to be coming out of my mouth backwards. And upside-down. In a base-language previously spoken only by Neanderthals. If the words growling out of my mouth don’t even make sense to me, I should just lie down and get my wits together, right? At least, that is what I have been told. Wits still waiting.
Occasionally, after the fifth time I smash my head into a door frame while I attempt to walk through it, I suddenly decide that, yes, this whole lying-down thing might actually be a good idea, if only to keep my brains (what few of them there are remaining) inside my head. I will be swooping and diving like a cranium-heavy six-month-old toward whatever surface looks most likely to knock me out cold, and I will say, “hmm,” and I will go lie down. It seems smart at the time, this saving myself from inadvertent concussive whiplash. And everyone agrees.
Until I wake up.
Other people lie down and a miraculous veil of sleep slips over them and they float off into dreamland, awakening refreshed and rejuvenated. They stretch and yawn and smile and take deep cleansing breaths and continue about their day in a state of energized bliss.
I, in comparison, lie down and am instantaneously assaulted by every unwanted, unnecessary thought, unfinished idea, and unsolved problem from the Dawn of Time to the Here and Now. They pin me down and line up smartly and march double-time through my head in spiked combat boots. Twice. I collapse on to my pillow with a head jammed full of wet cotton wool and wake up with a head full of buzzing, angry bees, ready to battle every innocent bunny and dangling participle that crosses my path. Why? I don’t know! Neither does anyone else. All I know is that the grumpy I achieve before looks like puppies and kittens and butterflies compared to the grumpy I am gifted with after — I might as well wake up with bloody fangs, matted fur, and twenty razor-tipped claws, wearing the guise of some kind of strange, diurnal werebeast whose trigger is melatonin procured by the light of the afternoon sun.
The truth is, the only reason I ever lie down to take a nap is because I am an idiot.
If you are presented with the choice between standing around laughing while poking a sleeping Grizzly with a sharp pointy stick, or being in my vicinity when I succumb to exhaustion, then seriously, people— choose the bear.
Please, do not make me nap.
