If you look at today’s quote there is one thing that holds everything together…. Naps…. An afternoon nap can make a huge difference on how you make the past become today so you can live for another tomorrow.
I get asked all the time how I hold it together sleeping five maybe six hours every night.
It’s easy… I get home after the market closes and I sit in my chair and I say, “Siri, set a timer for thirty five minutes please” and Siri replies in a sexy British accent, “timer set for 35 minutes Jumbo, enjoy your nap.”
Twenty years ago I was at my fiancé’s Christmas party for the ski shop in Hensdale that she worked at during Christmas. She had been working there since she was in high school.
It was set in a nice chalet located at Katherine Legge Park out there near Hensdale. In fact eighteen months later we would be back there to take our wedding pictures in the park. Several years after that we’d go sledding with little Shepkids on the hills.
About two cocktails into this fancy ski shop party I found myself involved in a conversation with Terri and a longtime customer of the store. A Cougar who was about the age I am now. A put together nicely Hensdale divorcee. She just couldn’t get over the fact that I was eleven years older than my fiancé. I was thirty six at the time and my future wife was twenty five.
“Oh please tell me the secret! You both look like you are in your mid twenties… I need to know how you do it John.”
Here I am two Manhattans into a party that I didn’t want to be at. A sexy cougar is asking me how I do it and is flirting with an oiled up JumboLove in front of his fiancé?
I wiped the bourbon off of my top lip slowly and I lean forward to Karen Livingston and I tell her that I take afternoon naps. At that period in my life they were closer to sixty minutes long. I didn’t just tell her I take naps though….
“Well Karen, you want to know my secret?” I can feel my future wife stiffening up next to me as Karen leans closer to me.
“Oh yes, yes please tell me!”
“Karen, it’s real simple. Before I take my nap I rub one off real quick and then I fall asleep for an hour.”
Before the last words of that sentence floated to the ground Karen was gone. She snapped her boots like a soldier guarding the Tomb of the Unknown and marched off to the bar.
My job here was done and my fiancé was flaming mad at me. She couldn’t understand why I would say that to her customer. She told me she’d never say anything like that if it was a Christmas party for my company.
My company was a trading floor! They would love it if you told them you masturbate before every nap. My customers would tell me to marry this girl on the hop.
Needless to say I dropped my fiancé off at her parents house in Hensdale about an hour later and was at Shanahan's having a cocktail with my buddies soon after.
When I walked into my local bar in a sport coat and slacks I was immediately ridiculed.
“Jeez Shep! You start dating a girl from the other side of Mannheim Road and you get all fancy!”
Naps… I took them in the past. I took one yesterday and I sure as hell will be taking them as I get older. Naps are what keeps life moving smoothly. They keep you young.
Today is National Hot Toddy day. When I was a kid my mommy or gramma didn’t rush me to a Doc in the Box. They poured me a double Hot Toddy and rubbed Vicks Vapor rub on my chest. I was at school the next day.
Old School Baby! This also prepared me for many Unemployment evenings when we’d go out boozing the night before a 7:30 number.
Next time you are feeling sick, get the Old Grandad out of the medicine cabinet and feel better immediately.
