No, I’m not talking about “Eyes Wide Shut”. Besides, it wasn’t three hours long, even if it felt like it was. But already I’m digressing, and I haven’t even truly started yet.
What I am talkin’ about is my nap this afternoon. It started shortly around 4:00 p.m., when, feeling incredibly run-down, somewhat dizzy, and entirely uncute (thanks to the inexcusable practical joke the rain plays on my hair) (Post-It to Rain: It’s not funny anymore. It never was. So stop it already.), I decided to “lie down for a while”. Well, at 6:50 p.m. or so, when Some Guy I Live With (anonymity is vital, as he has recently joined the Witness Protection Program) came home and found Sleeping Cutie (or Uncutie, as the case today may be, and was) asleep, S.C. stirred (but not shaken), mumbled something adorable, such as “Hrunph? Errhhh?”, looked across the room at the scrolling text screen-saver that serves as her clock (clever girl), and discovered that it was way too early for her to be waking up. After all, it wasn’t even 7:00 on a Saturday morning, and even though the gym awaited at 8:30, it still wasn’t time … to …
It was then that I realized that it was “p.m.” and not “a.m.” Of course, this wasn’t the first time this has happened. In fact, it’s happened to me quite a few times, and each time I marvel at how alike the day looks in each “m.” (It just so happens that each time this has happened, it’s been at an hour that is normally regarded as a typical morning-awakening hour. It wouldn’t work if, say, you woke up at 3:00 a.m. or p.m.)
When I realized that I’d “napped” for three hours, the first thing I thought — even before “Man, are you a loser!” and “When, exactly, Mr. ‘Ask Jeeves’, does a stretch of sleep pass the boundary between ‘nap’ and ‘real sleep’?” — was this: I slept for precisely the amount of time allotted for that ill-fated tour undertaken by the crew and passengers aboard the S.S. Minnow (that tiny ship)!
And then I realized I really was a loser — not just for having taken a three-hour nap, but for having made a connection, however tenuous, between me and “the castaways”.
Good night. You’ve been a wonderful audience.