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Nap Nomenclature

Naps are wonderful things. As an adult, I realize this. I wish as a child I had the appreciation for them which I have now. Incidentally, it was my mother I was talking to not long ago on a day when she had not been able to make time for a nap as she had intended to. “I didn’t get my nap today” she said, and I realized that you don’t get naps you take naps. It is always there, the time, the couch, the blanket. If you are to have a nap you must take that time from whatever other busy-ness your day may be filled with and apply it to only yourself and rest.

That highlighted to me just how important it is the way we talk about naps (among other things), and I started to compile a list of nap names. I realized that much like the Eskimo have many names for snow, we have many ways of talking about naps here are a few:

• Disco nap - One of the few naps taken at night, a disco nap is a quick sleep during a party or night out with which you recharge so you can get back and party with even more gusto into the wee hours.
• Power nap - Imagine a leather couch in a high-powered executive’s corner office. Imagine that they schedule twenty minutes into their afternoon to sleep soundly there and wake up ready to blaze ahead through an afternoon of boring meetings. Power naps are characterized by short periods of sound sleep in the middle of a productive day. Might be referred to as “getting a wink”.
• Cat nap - The key characteristic of a cat nap is not how you sleep but how you wake up. Where a power nap would conclude with a jump and stretch and bustle of activity, waking from a cat nap may include as little as opening the eyes and possibly rolling over. This may lead to another cat nap or just laying there and looking out the window at the delicious birds. Also called a television nap. A master at this kind of snoozing can watch a baseball game on television and sleep during each half inning while the opposing team bats and wake up to watch the home team on offense.
• Afternoon nap - An afternoon nap has been a regularly scheduled feature in the day of many remarkable people like Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Thomas Edison to name a few. The key characteristic here is the regularity and as the name implies it is done in the afternoon, after being awake and productive for several hours and with several hours of productivity still to go. This is a favorite of adults and often loathed by children. Also called a siesta
• Church nap - Also called a meeting nap, this is dozing when you are not supposed to be, and doing so with every attempt at stealth. My favorite part of this nap is when you are awake enough to feel the weight of your skull balancing on the vertabrae in your neck, but not awake enough to control the neck muscles to keep your head from falling out of balance. Often this feeling of your head falling off your neck is what startles you awake. Must also be taken sitting upright.
• Airplane nap - So named because it is taken sitting up, often while travelling (can also be taken on a bus or train, or in a waiting area). Usually in a confined area where leaning to the side is impossible, leaning the seat back three-quarters of an inch does little for comfort (except to annoy the person behind you), and guarantees that a flight attendant will wake you up to ensure that you cannot remain so comfortable for the last twenty nappable minutes. Thus, the airplane nap is often taken with the chin on the chest.
• Morning nap - Distinct from merely “sleeping in” because it requires getting up and dressing and/or eating but still arriving back in a horizontal position before noon. This rare and unusual nap is usually taken in circumstances of ill health or after an night of little or no sleep.
• Micro nap - Is characterized by being short (2-5 minutes). Although rarely deep or intense sleep, the micro nap can be an important psychological punctuation to one’s day.

Let us be clear about this, a nap is not a substitute for a restful night’s sleep. In fact the healthiest people in the world, the Japanese, say as much in their list of sleep guidelines (Engrish). Without a healthy night’s sleep, your body may commandeer your eyelids and a coup of exhaustion can occur (like what happend to Dick Cheney).

And finally, if you have any trouble convincing your boss that a nap will improve your performance, you can either take your wallet and head over to MetroNaps during your break or you can show this “official-looking page full of explanations about why napping is good for business.”

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