Who Needs Sleep?

I've heard of a practice known as the "power nap" - some sort of magical super-sleep that allows amazing feats of unparalleled rest and clarity. A state-of-the-art breakthrough in slumber technology that can accomplish in mere minutes what was previously possible only with eight uninterrupted hours and the assistance of a teddy bear.

I'm not very good at power naps.

Part of the problem may be my approach. I'm told that a power nap is meant to supplement sleep, not replace it. I instead tend to use them as a last resort, when my choices have been reduced to Nap or Collapse. It's at times like this that the aforementioned eight-hours-and-a-teddy-bear combination is what I truly need. I generally settle for thirty-seven minutes on the cat-hair-encrusted couch instead.

This is the sleep of the damned; a clenched, desperate, sweating sleep. Fragments of dreams bob to the surface of a simmering stew of slumber. A confusion of fantastic animals and faces of friends and (for some reason) an elderly yellow Citroën parade through my head. From time to time I awaken and look at the clock. Twenty-three more minutes . . . seventeen more minutes . . . twelve more minutes . . . six more minutes . . . .

The alarm shrieks at me, stampeding the sloths and gazelles and echidnas and comical European automobiles.

My head hurts. There's a funny taste in my mouth, like one of the smaller of my dream bests has taken up residence there, or at least passed through after a heavy meal. My bladder is disproportionately full for the amount of time I spent unconscious. "You may only have slept for forty-one minutes," my kidneys tell me, "but we put in a full night's work."

And so muzzily I arise, scratching and blinking my way to the bathroom, Warren Zevon singing in my head.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead . . . ."

Could be any minute now.