Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [87]
I’m hoping no one we invite to stay with us is going to read this but I don’t like guests who stand around asking whether there’s anything they can do. If someone asks whether there’s anything he or she can do, there almost never is because the people who ask that question aren’t the kind of people who know how to do anything.
There shouldn’t be many decisions to make on vacation. It’s best when the biggest question you have to answer during the day is “What do you want for dinner?” or “Do you need anything at the store?”
Every year I bring several boxes of letters and miscellaneous pieces of paper from my office to go through. I have never yet gone through them. That’s what a vacation is for—not doing things.
Napping
You’re certainly not interested in how I sleep, but I’m going to tell you only because you’ll relate it to yourself or to the people you know well enough to know how they sleep.
There aren’t many things I do really well but when it comes to sleeping, I’m one of the best. If sleeping was an Olympic event, I’d be on the U.S. team.
Coming home from a trip recently I got on the plane, strapped myself in and fell asleep before takeoff. As always, I didn’t wake up until
Napping 189
Enjoying one of life’s greatest, simplest pleasures
the flight attendant shook me to ask if I was comfortable. Keep in mind, the flight was at 9 a.m., and I’d just had a good night’s sleep.
Nothing seems to bother some people when they sleep, and I’m one of them. I can eat dinner, drink two cups of strong black coffee and drop off thirty seconds after I hit the pillow. One of the few things that keeps me awake is decaffeinated coffee.
If the village fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night, I awaken easily, try to determine where the fire is and then drop back off to sleep in a matter of seconds.
Some people sleep faster than others. I’m a very fast sleeper. I can nod off for three minutes and wake up as refreshed as though I’d had eight hours. Some people can lie around in bed for nine hours and get up sleepy. I awaken instantly, going full speed.
We probably ought to sleep more often and not for so long. The trouble is, once the bed is made, we can’t get back in it, and during the day most of us get so far from our beds that it wouldn’t be practical, anyway. It might pay off for a company to have a room with cots where employees could take a nap. Companies have cafeterias and bathrooms, why not a dormitory bedroom? If employees got an hour for lunch, they could divide it any way they liked between eating and sleeping.
Naps are underrated. I don’t know why we dismiss napping as an inconsequential little act. The word itself doesn’t even sound important. I think everyone should get off his or her feet and lie down for a few minutes at some point during a long day.
Staying in bed for eight hours a night, on the other hand, seems wasteful to me. It’s like overcharging a battery. At some point, it doesn’t do any good. Most people who sleep eight hours stay in bed because they don’t want to get up, not because they need the sleep. Taking all your sleep in one piece doesn’t make any more sense than eating too much but only eating once a day.
Napping got a bad reputation somewhere along the line and I resent it. For some reason, people who don’t nap feel superior to those who do. Nappers try to hide it. They don’t let on that they drop off once in a while because they know what other people will say.
“Boy, you can really sleep,” or, “Look at him. He sleeps like a baby.” It isn’t much, but there’s just a touch of scorn in the voice.
People who are awake feel superior to people who are asleep because sleeping people usually don’t look so good. It’s a rare person who looks or acts as well asleep as he or she does awake. You don’t have any control of your face muscles, your jaw is apt to drop open and your hair is a mess. You look just the opposite of the way you look