Remembrance of Zzzzz's Past

A good nap is God's way of saying, "Stay out of My hair for a while."
                                                                    --Mark Fenster

I realize it's several weeks late to be compiling and publishing a "decade's top ten" list, but this is no ordinary list that can be compiled hastily or before the decade is actually over and done with. This is my list of the top ten naps I took from 2000-2009. I take my napping quite seriously, to the point that for more than two decades now I have assiduously kept a meticulous nap-log. Be-splattered with drool and stray eye-crumbs though it may be, it is the official record of my precious "me" time. For the past several weeks, as laundry has piled up, I have pored over the log, re-visiting naps great and lousy, making tentative lists, and finally paring down the list from well over 200 possibilities to this, the definitive, annotated list of The Best Naps of the 2000s (in chronological order).

1. January 12, 2000: Even so early in the decade, I had starred this nap as a potential "best of." So soon after Christmas break, I was in need of another free day, so I took a late afternoon nap with my pj's turned inside out, the universal good luck charm of hopeful students (and teachers) everywhere. Sure enough, upon waking the wind was howling and the snow was adrift. At 5:26 a.m. the next morning, I received a phone call: no school, snow day. I owed it all to the nap.
2. November 28, 2000: A nap well-remembered for its dream: for seemingly hours I kept jumping over a restless sheep, as he bahhed in what seemed to me like an ordered sequence. I woke up and drove straight to Best Steak and Gyro and chowwed down.
3. July 19, 2001: Perfect estivation. I didn't break 80 on the golf course that day, but aided by a Guinness at the 19th hole, and a smooth-running fan, I broke several sleep warps. And not a bead of sweat dampened the pillow.
4. February 5, 2003: Breaking a long spell of uneven, unsatisfying naps that in hindsight I either chalk up to 9/11 or the ensuing high opinion polls of George W., this nap, culminated by a waking moan of "Oh my Lord, now that's what I call dozing off!" rejuvenated my faith in siestas.
5. April 9, 2004: What just happened? What time is it? Where am I? Who am I?
6. April 11, 2004: In what is undoubtedly the greatest napping week of my life (4/8, 4/12, and 4/14 all made Top 50), this one, despite the puddle of drool on the pillow, was memorable for providing me, upon waking, with the name of the Little League teammate I had been trying--to the point of madness--to remember for six months.
7. December 2, 2005: I woke up at 5:45 p.m. My arm woke up at 8:03 p.m. Sawing logs? The Gobi was a forest when I fell asleep.
8. May 1, 2007: The Annual Hilda K. Memorial Nap, which I take every year in honor of my childhood babysitter who could never get me to nap, this year was a triumph. I heard spring birds throughout my slumber and woke up so refreshed I did all my spring cleaning in a three-hour burst of energized frenzy.
9. August 8, 2008: Amid mid-90 degree heat and a driveway outside my window being jackhammered apart, I slept like a baby.
10. January 11, 2009: Sometimes in a Cleveland winter, the only motivating force to get you out of bed in the morning is the thought of the nap you'll be taking later that day. This one did not disappoint. Then again, any dream involving bacon, Cheryl Tiegs, and an intimate performance by Sly and the Family Stone would never disappoint.

The Kinks-I Go To Sleep (demo)