Okay, so I’m back from my brief vacation visiting the family in Cape Cod. I’m back at work. And I’m more than ready for my nap.
Yep, the upside of vacation is the opportunity to relax, do fun things with people you love, and take afternoon naps. The downside is that when vacation is over, I’m still in “nap mode” and around 2PM I’m jonesing for a little sleepy time.
I really think that school systems that have nap time for kindergarteners have the right idea. Or perhaps that should be “had”? For all I know, they don’t have nap time in kindergarten anymore.
But there is a fundamental question that has never been answered to my satisfaction, which is: Whoever said that nap time should be eliminated once a person hits double-digits? I, for one, believe that there is entirely too big an age gap between toddlers and retirees who get to enjoy the luxury of a little midday snooze. What about the rest of us?!
Frankly, I think companies could reap great benefits from installing “nap rooms.” Employees would be more inclined to work as opposed to surfing the net for a YouTube video to keep them awake and entertained when the 2PM sleepies hit. Probably they’d be less cranky, too. It’d be easy. Purchase a few comfy recliners, distribute pillows and blankies and little timers so employees can’t sleep away the entire afternoon. I mean, I’m perfectly willing to be reasonable – 20 minutes is all I’m asking for.
The only downside I could see to this plan is that it could be perhaps a tiny bit embarrassing to lead a meeting with dried drool on the side of your mouth following a nap break. Or being an HR representative charged with firing a fellow employee with whom you’d just shared naptime. But we’re in the brainstorming phase here so we still have time to work out the kinks.
And just to show you how much I back this idea, I’d be willing to be a test subject to see how much more productive I could be with a 20-minute nap every afternoon. We could do, say, a 15-20 year study to make sure we have enough data to comfortably conclude that naps are necessary for those of us over the legal drinking age but not yet old enough to qualify for senior citizen discounts.
By the time we concluded our research and reported it in the “Naps Digest” scientific journal, I’d be old enough to retire and the findings – for me, anyway - would be moot. Hey, I could live with that.
In the meantime, I’m left with either drinking massive quantities of caffeine or taking a short snooze in my car at lunchtime. The latter solution could be potentially embarrassing should a concerned citizen mistake my slumber for a more pressing health emergency and call the paramedics to revive me.
Not only that, but I’d have to research the definition of “vagrant” to make sure I wasn’t breaking any laws that could get me tossed in the pokey. On the other hand, I’d bet I could grab a nap in there!
Vacations are wonderful things. But I should probably stop indulging in afternoon naps during said vacations. It only teases me when I have to jump back on the employee treadmill.
Ah well. I guess I will console myself that Saturday is fast approaching. I’ll just have to hope that in between loads of laundry and other weekend chores that I can grab a few winks. It may not be 40, but any will do.
*Yawn*… Dang. There I go again…
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