The tale of the car nap

People rarely even nap, let alone ever discover the intricacies of the car nap. There are two breeds of car naps, the stationary and the kinetic variety. Due to a habitual sort of solitude I have relied heavily on the park car car nap. Sure, I have flirted occasionally with sleep in a moving car during road trips but my bread and butter is the parking lot nap. My parked car naps began years ago after beginning a job as a latté slave in the coffee mines. For whatever reason my manager decided that I would fit in terribly well with bubbly baristas at 5AM. I am not sure that there is a time of day appropriate for their overwhelming happiness but with great confidence I can say for the majority of humanity the apex of our happiness occurs at an hour after the sun has risen. This scheduling error forced me to explore alternative sleep habits and led to my own personal discovery of car naps. Please remember that this is what works for me and that every individual will have to make adjustments to this process. At that time I was fortunate to drive a glorious Buick Park Avenue with plush red, deeply padded seats and the ability to electronically adjust height, temperature and leg room. After a long shift I would drive to the town where most of my friends lived and find somewhere to park and sleep. Initially, I slept wherever I would have normally parked, choosing to sleep in close proximity to my next destination. This is convenient but not ideal for maximizing the effect of a car nap. Reading that last sentence a stranger might mistake this whole tutorial as a joke, but car naps are capable of soul restorative properties that plain everyday naps cannot begin to compare to. My first naps were difficult and I would sleep fitfully. I would often awake with a bit of sweat and a need to urinate. These naps were better than nothing but they were a poor replacement for true sleep. Knowing what I know now I can only laugh at my mistakes. I adjusted my chair well enough but failed to find a perfect location and never considered blocking out the sunlight. Blocking out light is vital to any real sleep, and can easily be accomplished with a sleepmask (for the fruity) or a t-shirt tied around the face double folded so as not to interfere with the flow of breath. Selecting a proper location for a car nap is probably the most important and personal aspect of this process. My sleep haven was located in the parking lot of a shopping strip I called Connecticut (it was very artificial, white with a protestant lilt). This location was perfect because there was a low traffic volume and it was used almost exclusively by employees so it was rare to be disturbed by people getting in and out of their cars. Secondly, it had a large amount of tree cover which kept the temperature cool, provided moisture and allowed for a great deal of natural beauty. I believe it is important to see something beautiful as soon as you wake up, trees have served me well and protected me through the most epic and well deserved naps of my life. The third ingredient for a car nap is a nearby discrete location to piss. I am not sure what it is but there is something about naps that makes me have to piss like I just drank a gallon of water. And the final ingredient for a car nap like no other is a nearby flowing water body. This is because at a primal level man knows that his safety is directly linked to his proximity to water. In order to enjoy a phenomenal car nap we must appease the caveman within us. I hope that this guide serves to aid others on their quest to the perfect car nap. I know that many a time I have been about to despair only to be brought back from the brink with the deeply restorative powers of the car nap. So whatever your path I reccomend a car nap today, criminals, hobos, lawyers, Obama, everyone celebrate today as national car nap day. Tomorrow we will change the world!

If Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote about my eating habits

This thin hairy man would enter into a restaurant without warning and calmly but carefully select his meal, he would politely order it and focus upon a book for a couple moments before his food arrived. Everything appeared to be completely ordinary and under control, but then his meal would arrive.

With a focus and ravenous appetite he would shovel forkful after forkful of food into his mouth, hardly stopping to breathe or swallow, and usually would be finishing his dinner in the time most people wash their teeth and floss. The well mannered mothers in the room would be shocked and tell their husbands that that was exactly why they had to make sure their child learned some decent table manners. He would not be allowed to eat so haphazardly with food falling off of his plate, sauce and oil staining his shirt and the creases of his mouth, no their children would be raised properly.

These people would think I wonder if he has eaten in days, he is rather skinny, maybe there is a reason for his speed. Maybe he was raised by wolves. On the other hand the children watching would be thrilled, day-dreaming of a point in their lives when they could eat however they wanted without any nonsense. No eating and pretending to enjoy it, no calmly savoring your food, no instead you could eat it like you meant it, filling your mouth as fast as you wanted without any care for these silly pointless manners. After all our pets don't eat slowly and calmly, even a nasty can of ground up meat excites them.

There is a skill to how he eats, a certain methodical approach that is relentless. Not once does he slow down. He mows through the appetizer, waits patiently for his entree and demolishes that with the calm of a gunslinger, and just as suddenly as it began he pays the check and leaves, perhaps taking a piece of baklava to go.

The parents relax, no more do they have to worry about this wild man ruining their childrens' manners. The children are a bit disappointed but firmly tell themselves that they will someday eat like him, that someday they can do whatever they want and not worry about what adults say you're supposed to do, or what is good for you.