Naptime

I tried to take a nap this afternoon, but my room was too hot. Now I feel sick.

I am always a little out of sorts when I take naps during the day, but most especially on hot afternoons. I get very disoriented and groggy, more so than if I had just left well enough alone and stayed awake until I went to bed later on in the evening.

Once, when I was in high school, I came home from school exhausted and lay down in my room for a nap before starting on homework (or, if I remember myself correctly, not starting on it). I woke up and saw that it was 6:00. Outside it was that grayish sort of haze that could be either morning or evening, and in this case I thought it was morning; I was absolutely convinced I had slept all the way through the afternoon, into the night, and now it was the next morning and OH NO I hadn't done my homework! (Why that should have stressed me out I don't know, since I tended not to do it anyway, as I said. But anyway, I was upset, on principle.)

I got up and took a shower, and began to drearily get my stuff ready for another tedious day of classes. While I was doing so, my mom stopped by my room, knocked on the door, and peeked in.

"How are you feeling?" she said.

"Fine," I said in a voice like a tomb. "Except for the fact that I took a nap yesterday and I slept all the way til now, and I didn't get my homework done, and now I have to go to school. Ugh."

My mother looked at me strangely. "Oh, ok," she said, and backed slowly out of the room.

Well, I continued to get ready, and eventually I plodded downstairs with my backpack. My brother E and my dad were in the living room, talking. They stopped when they saw me. My dad said, "Where are you going?"

With every ounce of teenaged sarcasm in my body, I snapped, "Where does it look like I'm going? Obviously I'm going to school!"

My brother and my dad started laughing, which of course made me angrier.

"What's so funny?" But I didn't wait for an answer, just flounced off to another room to get away from them.

And then I realized that it was, in fact, not 6 in the morning, but 6 in the evening on the same day that I had lain down for a nap. I hadn't overslept at all! It was still yesterday, not today! Or tomorrow. Or it was now, not then. Er, or...well, I was very confused at that point, as you can imagine! I kept forgetting what day it was, for the rest of the night. It was all very surreal.

But on the other hand I was pleased that I had more time to not do all the homework I had been upset about not doing when I thought it was the next day.