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!