Daily naps can be helpful, refreshing

So are you one of those folks who take a nap or one of those folks who don’t?

I’m a nap taker, and proud of it.

I wake up from a mid-day siesta and I’m refreshed, ready for round two of … whatever.

It was my father who introduced me to daily napping. He probably didn’t want to (he was a driven kind of guy) but his doctor insisted after his heart attack.

I figured if my dad took a nap every day, it must be alright.

Siestas come naturally to me: I was born hungry and sleepy.

In college I would come back to my dorm room after class, curl up in my giant bean bag (it was in the 1970s) and fall asleep.

My roommate thought I was depressed. I thought I was sleepy. My roommate was studying psychology. I really wasn’t studying anything.

I got a horrible sunburn in college taking a nap. I was walking by the university stadium on a wonderful spring day. The sky was blue, the grass was green, I stretched out and had a nap like a sleepy cat. My lips and eyes were pretty much swollen shut for the next day or two.

Siesta time is one of the reasons I moved to the American Southwest. Visiting Cozumel off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in 1983 I found folks kicking back in the noon hour. Some were enjoying cervezas in the outdoor cafés, some were sleeping under trees.

This was the place for me! Legal naps!

Emigrating to Mexico isn’t exactly done, so I moved to Albuquerque.

I think folks who throw jabs at people who take naps may be the ones who can’t bring themselves to have a few winks during the day, so they hassle those who do.

Working construction in the Duke City I’d slip off during lunch to grab a quick 15-minute nap to be refreshed for the second half of the shift. It was something my co-workers hadn’t seen before and they hassled me about it.

As a morning radio guy, many a job found me working ’til around noon, going home for a nap, then returning to work fully recharged.

When I lived in Arizona it was too far between where I worked and where I lived so I bought a portable cot. In the beginning I went to the city park, set my cot under a tree and had my nap. The guys at the car dealership across the street from the park said they knew it was lunchtime when I came to sleep under my favorite tree.

Then one day some homeless guy woke me up to ask for “spare change,” so I started taking naps behind the radio station. I got a bad allergy. I was taking naps under a tree I was allergic to. Pollen rained on me while I slept.

These days I take my nap after work.

So if you’re a regular nap taker, you’re not alone.

If you yearn to take a nap but feel you can’t, remember the old saying: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Grant McGee hosts the weekday morning show on KTQM-FM in Clovis. Contact him at:

[email protected]