The Nap and the Old Gray Hair

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission (like you care!)

More from Life in the Middle Ages

The Nap

If, like most men who are reaching - or have already accomplished - their foray into the middle ages; naps are slowly becoming one of the more dependable parts of your life, but - being a robust and active person - you don’t want to spend the entire day unconscious, you can use your body’s natural abilities to your advantage. Been awhile since you’ve heard that, huh?

Now, it’s true that you can set a jarring, annoying, household-waking alarm clock to blast your dreams in the next two hours, there’s no need. Nature has produced in you an internal alarm clock you can set for just about two hours – just enough time to get into and out of that dream – and one that won’t wake up anyone else.

Here’s the secret. Get one of those old 64oz 7-11, plastic, what-did-I-ever-keep-this-for souvenir cups and fill it full of ice-cold water. Guzzle that sucker right before lying down, and you’re guaranteed to be up in a couple of hours.

Two hours a little too long for the nap? Drink it slightly warm – that should have you up and about within the hour.

There’s even a snooze to nature’s alarm clock: beer. Stay with the Lights or Ultra-lights, they’re a fifteen-minute bonus naptime.

Caution: Don’t try the light beer warm! The most effective and time efficient way to handle warm light beer is to pour it directly down the toilet. There is absolutely no reason to get in the middle of that operation, as it takes the very same amount of time to complete the cycle whether you’re a part of it or not!)

You know your body and what it will hold and how long – use it. It’s not that your body is becoming less dependable, on the contrary, it’s becoming steadily more and more dependable; you simply have to have a new perspective on what you can depend on it for.
What to sleep the night through? Don’t drink anything for two hours before bed. Suck on an ice cube, or a clean towel soaked in water.

You’re in the prime time of life, you’ve just settled into the after 9PM slot. Some of the better shows are on then, and if you want to be awake to see them, you better think seriously about that nap.

The old gray hair.

For most of us, gray hairs show up on the face first, before migrating to the top of the head. There are many reasons for this; first of all, there’s generally more hair on the face than there is on the head. Also an argument can be made that after scraping your face clean every morning for so many years, your body is just paying you back for all the hair stress you caused.

But it’s more than that. There is a reason for a gray face.

There are plenty of products on the market that will let you color and mask the iron in your beard, allow you to remove the salt from the salt-and-pepper, but this is a trap.
Gray hair comes into the face first as a warning to you and, more importantly, to the young lady you are trying to deceive. Sure, at first, it may be a real ego boost to go out on the town, arm-in-arm with a young woman who was born in the same year Aliens was released and thinks that Barney Miller was the deputy on Mayberry; but eventually it’s going to happen.

After a night of dancing to music that comes with a warning label for the 40 and over crowd, she’s going to want to keep going, and you’ve already gone. It can’t end in any other way than heartbreak, hurt feelings and physical therapy.

The gray is there for a reason.

On the other hand, the gray in the face has another purpose. It is also a welcoming sign to women that prefer a slightly more sedentary life. I’m referring to women your own age. Gray hair says that you have finally reached the point in your life where you are happy just to sit still and snuggle on the couch.

In fact, sitting still is the one activity left where you can go all night.

If you don’t drink anything.

Ghost Step

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

They say that there are two types of ghosts, the type that haunts a particular place and the type that haunts a particular person. I have my ghost that follows me from place to place and shows up on occasion.

This ghost is not the spirit of a person: it’s a step.

As in stairs.

I’m not the sort of person who likes to look at his feet as he walks. I look straight ahead to see what’s in front of me, and very rarely does this present a problem as the ground beneath me doesn’t change.

Usually.

That’s when the ghost step strikes. It happened again just the other day; I was walking down the stairs where I work, out the back door, and to the truck in my bid for freedom. I have taken this flight of stairs twice a day (lunch), five days each week for the last five years. I know these stairs, I know them well, but the ghost step showed up again.

I saw the step as I descended. I know it was there, I saw it, I saw the shadow it cast, I saw the odd little tread grabber on the edge of the step. I STEPPED ON THAT STEP. It wasn’t until I brought the other foot down that the ghost step played its trick on me. That foot encountered cement about 11 inches sooner than my poor befuddled brain thought it should.

The impact of that sudden stop rattled my teeth and collapsed one of my sinus cavities. The sound of the shoe slapping the cement exploded like a shotgun in the cavernous stair well and somewhere in the back of my mind I could hear a malevolent little stair-step chuckle.

As jarring as that is, it’s at least better than when my personal poltergeist conceals the last step when there really is one more. In these cases, my foot goes out a great deal further than the width of the last step and I end up doing the teeter-totter on the gripper edge of the step. In these cases I either start running on the landing so my body can catch up to my legs, or I have to make a little mini-paratrooper jump, feet together and sway for a moment until my momentum goes away.

Taking the step that isn’t there is a little easier to cover up. The person on the stairs next to you, except for the minor explosion of shoe leather sound, can’t tell that you’ve just shaken your molars into your throat. The paratrooper hop is harder to disguise. People tend to look at you as though you’re crazy for doing that, and explaining a personal poltergeist in the shape of a stair step following you around from building to building does nothing to ease their fears about your mental stability.

Yeah, like I’m the only one it happens to.

I hear that little step chuckling even now.

On Target

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

When I was growing up in the booming metropolis of Red Wing Minnesota, my parents and I would take an annual pilgrimage.

Every year in late August, just before the school, we would pile in the car and take the hour-long drive through the woods, past the hills and into the deep, dark recesses of – HASTINGS!

There was no one to go visiting in Hastings, my folks probably knew at least a handful of people that lived there, but this was not a social visit. This was business – serious business.

In Hastings Minnesota, there was a Mecca, an oasis, a place that was both mysterious and grand:
Hastings had a Target.

To a ten year old, it seemed like mile after mile of wonders. Racks of clothing sprouted from the floor like so many polyester bushes. Each isle was an entire universe of shiny stuff we didn’t need, but we got anyway, because who knew when we’d be back?

I gravitated to the stationary isles. We were there for back-to-school, so I had my obligatory list to fill out for the year.

Paper. It was college ruled – that made me feel awfully adult – and wrapped up tight and sealed. No one – NO ONE had ever, ever opened this pack before me. It was new, unexplored and I became addicted to the smell of a fresh package of paper.

Pens. The first time I was allowed to choose a pen over a pencil was a milestone of my maturity (though I had to have a note from the teacher saying it was OK – there are degrees of maturity after all). Blue, black and green ink - red was reserved for the corrections to be placed on it later. I bought all the disposable pens I could get my hands on (as long as Dad was willing to cough up the cash).

Binders. Binders were the most essential part of school. I almost never ended up actually using them, but the surface of the binder was essential for doodling while you’re supposed to be listening. The paper or cardboard binder was best for this, vinyl covered binders ruined the entire effect unless you covered them with an inside out grocery bag (these were all paper). Then the cover could be tossed when full and a fresh clean canvas applied.

ORAGNIZER. The most essential part of the entire trip. The organizer with the thousand pockets and strings and zippers and folds. I am now and was then about as organized as a dust devil, but the trapper/keeper and the flip-folder and all the rest of the great organizers promised to keep me on the straight and narrow. And in order to get Dad to pay for it, I too had to promise to keep on the straight and narrow.

It was a lie, of course. Within a week, the organizer would be little more than a repository for miscellaneous and unrelated garbage roughly shoved into the little pockets and zippers and folds.

The organizer was an important tradition of the school year, though. At the end of the year, it got cleaned out, and the memories it carried in the form of forgotten papers that never were handed in, broken disposable pens that collected and leaked in the bottom of the pockets, even once the little bit of Twinkie that had been there for the entire year (still soft and spongy – kinda frightening that), made me reflect back on the year that had ended and praise God that it was over and done with.

Scissors. Why did I ever get scissors? They were NEVER used. They rattled around with me for the first month and then found a permanent home in the bottom of the locker. At the end of each year, they were thrown out when I cleaned out he locker (an action requiring heavy equipment) and then, three months later a new pair was purchased to be ballast for the next year.

Erasers. The gummy, little hand soap looking things that were absolutely useless when you were using a pen. Some time after sixth grade, they came out with a new sort of eraser that was completely useless for pencils too. The really white ones with the cardboard wrapper that smeared the pencil mark into a blob and then tore the paper.

Once the school shopping was done, it was on to the TOYS! Isles and isles of great toys the beeped and whirred and whistled and spun and flung themselves at you on command. Toys that ran themselves, and even some that ran other toys. This was when I needed to carefully choose exactly which toy I was going to whine and pout and cry over until I got it.

There was a price range I knew to work within. Anything too pricey and I would get nothing at all, but if I went cheap, then I could lose out on something cool. Something that wasn’t made out of PLASTIC. Or MADE IN JAPAN. That was the junky stuff.

There are Targets, super Wal-Marts, K-Marts, malls and shopping nightmares stores all around me. I go to one about three of four times per month now.


What a let down. But I still praise God that school is over and one with.