I just got up from a two-hour nap. After getting only 4 hours of sleep last night so that I could be at the park by 6:30 to volunteer for the Healthy Kidney 10K (the winner of which, BTW, set a new course record), I felt like going home, but had to hang around and meet a colleague to meet for brunch and talk about a small job he wanted me to do.
So when I finally got home, I decided to take a nap.
But what is this "take a nap" phrase? Why must we take it? Why can't we give it? That's so much more positive, the idea of giving ourselves a gift of a nap; rather than the negative idea that we have to steal a nap from our day.
Similarly, why do we get our children "put down for a nap"? Why "put down"? That, too, is full of negative connotations. If you apply it to any other breathing animal, it means to have them killed! Is there an unconscious desire amongst all parents that their kid's next nap might be their last? Here, again, we could use a better phrase - GIVE. "I'm going to give Johnny a nap," despite the mob-enforcer overtones, is at least marginally better than "I'm going to put Johnny down."
So today, I GAVE myself a nap.
Or does this entire line of thinking simply signal my transition into old person?
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