Hard-earned wisdom passed on at no charge
The Column: 04.11.24
There never was a bad nap. I pass this wisdom on to you, as an old man who has experienced more disappointment than you’ll ever know and it took me 75 years to learn how to deal with it: you lie down, close your eyes, and wake up feeling better.
I used to eat Wheaties because they sponsored “Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy” on the radio back before the rest of you were born and a men’s quartet sang, “Have you tried Wheaties? They’re whole wheat with all of the bran. Won’t you try Wheaties? For wheat is the best food of man.” Jack traveled the world foiling the evil plans of villains, and Wheaties were made by General Mills, based in Minneapolis, and Jack was based on a student at the University of Minnesota, which I intended to attend (and did, and graduated with a B.A.), and I was loyal to it for years, but last year, the most profitable in General Mills’s history, they jacked up the price of Wheaties to $8 while reducing the food content, and I felt betrayed and I haven’t put a spoonful of the Breakfast of Champions to my lips. The cereal in the box is worth about a dime, the box itself about a quarter, and the rest goes to enable a battalion of execs to own homes in Minneapolis and Aruba and Aspen and fly to Paris for a weekend. Nothing to do with foiling evil plans.
This disappoints me and I lie down for twenty minutes and the feeling passes though the boycott continues.
I feel the same way about the University, having learned that the football coach’s salary is ten times that of the U’s president. Not another penny should they expect from me. A nap ensues, and I go on to other issues.
Sometimes I’m stricken with dread that I will trip on a molehill and fall and hit my head on some geologic formation and suddenly I’ll be unable to spell “isosceles” and “insouciant” and “Piscacadawadaquoddymoggin” or remember the name of my cousin Joyce’s husband or be able to stand on one foot for thirty seconds and I’ll be on a downhill slide toward becoming a burden to others and my beloved, a skilled musician, will feel obligated to become a caregiver. Yikes!! But I lie down and in a little while, dread evaporates.
Mostly I live in a comfortable bubble, enjoying my morning coffee, avoiding bad news that’s beyond my power to affect, bloody wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza, brutal civil wars in Myanmar and Africa, waves of migrants trying to escape violence and poverty — I am mostly oblivious. The Christian missionaries who set out to save souls in Africa and South America saw the world much more clearly than I do. The Ecuadorean moms selling candy bars in subway stations know more about real life than I do. A person could walk along the little shops in low-rent neighborhoods and talk to immigrant entrepreneurs and learn more about the world than if you went to grad school for a Ph.D., but nobody I know does.
I ignore my relatives who are loyal to Mr. Presidefendant who is as removed from reality as I am. I went to high school with a Jim Jordan, a Matt Gaetz, a Mike Johnson, but my classmates don’t hold public office, they just hold a mug of beer in the corner saloon while they grouse about the unfairness of life. A nap would do them good.
Last week New York City felt an earthquake centered in New Jersey that measured 4.8 on the Richter scale, a slight tremor compared to the 7.4 quake on Taiwan. Some news reports used the verb “hit” but what I felt was only a vibration similar to what you feel standing on the corner as a bus goes by. A few days later the city went all out for the semi-total eclipse of the sun. Crowds gathered in Central Park, the manufacturers of eclipse glasses got rich, and my beloved was tremendously thrilled by the whole astronomical experience. It was a joyful communal experience for millions. For me, looking up at the darkened sky to see a tiny pinpoint of corona was a huge disappointment. I was expecting to be transformed in some way, and if not Raptured, at least enlightened, but the thrill was a good deal less than what I get from the average candle in the dark.
The eclipse occurred around 3:20 p.m. and I lay down around 4 and felt much better by 4:30.
If this column has disappointed you, go back and read the first paragraph.
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As a very active teen, my dad required me to rest on the sofa for 30 minutes every school day so I would not “burn out” - guess what- from then on to my current 81 st year naps have a daily treat.
Thank you, Mr. Keillor, for causing the memory jog that took me back to remember the origins of the word nap and the way it was used when it wiggled its way into Middle English from Old High German. (Some of your fellow English majors weren’t smart enough, or hadn’t the baritone, to go into radio, and curved their spines over Ph.D. studies of medieval manuscripts like monks of old). So, a brief point, Chaucer uses it synonymously with “sleep” in the Manciple’s Tale, and now that we know medieval folks often took a break in the middle of the night and got up to do Lord knows what, except those of us over 70 have a pretty good idea, and the clever synonyms come from this period too: nod, doze.
I suppose I’m a reluctant authority on the subject of napping, as many retired English professors are, because we’ve seen so much of it over the decades. It was once a favorite thing to do to give signals to a class to quietly exit a room at the end of an hour leaving the napper in his bliss, imagining his confusion waking in silence, perhaps late to Calculus.
Higher education is full of teachable moments.
Now, if only I could stand on one foot for thirty seconds. I’m a little afeered of that.