Nat Locke: in praise of napping, a favourite pastime of mine that is always restorative, sometimes life-saving

I have always assumed that if you routinely get up as early as I do, an afternoon nap is de rigueur. Until a surgeon told me recently that he also gets up at 4am and then operates on people all day without napping. WITHOUT NAPPING. I was so startled by this that I had to have a lie down.

I come from a long line of nappers, and by that I mean my mum would have an afternoon nap. Or at least, I assumed she did, given we weren’t allowed in the house post-lunch until 3pm. During this time, Mum retired to her bed for a bit. Did she nap? Did she read? Did she doom scroll on her phone? Well, not the latter — she can barely do that now. But still, after getting up early to milk the goat so we had something to put on our cereal, it’s no surprise a rest was required.

Yes, it would seem the apple doesn’t fall far from the sleeping tree. But last week, I took a nap that, when I told friends about it, shocked them. You see, after a particularly exhausting day at work, I had to drive down south. The weather was awful, the traffic on the freeway was relentless, and somewhere between Mandurah and Bunbury, I started to find myself feeling particularly drowsy. I did the usual things, like winding the window down for a bit and letting the sideways rain smash me in the face, turning the aircon on full blast and pinching myself. All that resulted was a nasty bruise and a case of near hypothermia, neither of which stopped me feeling tired.

So, I pulled over into the first available rest area and well, rested. I turned the car off, locked the doors, lay the seat right down and had a very pleasant 20-minute nap. I woke to the sound of heavy rain battering the car, put my seat up and drove the rest of the way to Busselton feeling quite chirpy.

But when I told my friends about it, they were downright shocked. Obviously the “Drowsy Drivers Die” campaign never hit the mark for them, but they were overwhelmingly surprised that I could actually sleep under those circumstances. They mostly seemed concerned that someone might have approached the vehicle while I was snoozing and that as a woman, I would be vulnerable to attack. No more vulnerable than at any other point in my existence, I pointed out. Besides, falling asleep at the wheel while driving at 110km/h is a more unacceptable level of vulnerability, in my humble opinion.

My ability to nod off like this is probably also hereditary, given I can remember being in a truck with my dad driving from Esperance to my grandparents’ farm in Bruce Rock. I was probably about three or four, and somewhere on a gravel road out the back of nowhere, my dad just pulled over and had a sleep. Meanwhile, I just sat there, looking out the window. There was no iPad, no Bluey episodes, not even a crayon. Just me, sitting there like a little potato, waiting for my dad to wake up. Which he did a short time later and we continued our journey without incident.

A good nap is restorative, and if you’re behind the wheel, potentially life-saving. But I’ve also nodded off while having my hair washed at the hairdressers. I’ve kipped while waiting for my takeaway pad Thai to be ready. I’ve snoozed in the car out the back of a gym before my workout. Once, I had a very brief catnap at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. In my defence, that was during my first week of being a breakfast radio announcer and it’s safe to say I was not yet accustomed to the hours.

It’s probably the only thing that stopped me from becoming a surgeon, now that I think about it. That, and my ATAR (or whatever it was called last century) wasn’t high enough to get into medicine. But the notion of getting up at 4am and still being capable of operating on people in the afternoon is unfathomable to me.

Now, don’t mind me, I’m off to the pillow show.