We need to find a name to describe the feeling of resentment one adult feels towards another who, through fair means or foul, manages to squeeze in an afternoon nap.
Napgate? Napenvy? Jealoustireduglyangryperson syndrome?
We need to name this thing, because the feelings of hostility that can present themselves when someone discovers someone else has managed to get more sleep than them can grow and intensify over many years. I suspect it may well have already ended good marriages and life-long friendships.
I have found through personal experience that snooze envy might develop most in intensity around the ongoing conundrum that is the Saturday morning sleep-in, and someone else’s ability to have one because the other person has got up with the kids.
The hostility is, of course, felt by the person who is up, not the person who gets the extra hours in the sack. Clearly.
My kids like to get up early on weekends because they can, and it is the only time they are allowed to watch movies during daylight hours. You would think they would by now know how to get a bowl of cereal, put a disc in the machine and turn it on without adult supervision (they manage to do this at times when they are not actually supposed to be watching a film or, for that matter, eating cereal).
But not at 6.30am on Saturdays apparently, which is generally the time when early-wake-up-anger, and the I-did-it-last-week-your-turn-I-was-up-all-night-haven’t-slept-a-wink-can-you-go-oh-f-f-s bit starts to happen. At these times, I feel that mariticide caused by a lack of nap might actually become a reality.
Over here, the other adult specialises in freelancing, which means he can often squeeze an afternoon siesta into his day. In fact, after many years of marriage, I’ve come to realise he might even schedule his working life in such a way to ensure he has one. A nap, that is, not a working life.
So, when I get home from a tough day slaving in the mines and spot the evidence – an altered pillow arrangement, man-shaped creases on top of the doona, and the newspaper, clearly read from cover to cover, scrunched up on our bed – I know it’s happened again and that’s when I feel the thing, the seething resentment, the black taste of bitterness at the back of my throat, and I end up saying something like “well, some of us have actual real work to do” or “shame not all of us have the kind of life where we can take a nap in the afternoon, and did you actually manage to cook dinner then?”.
It does bring out the worst in us, this nap-fury thing. No one likes crawling through the fog of the day knowing that a mere extra half hour under the covers could potentially make everything one needs to face in the day just that little bit more tolerable.
Apparently there are some happy, bouncy, shiny people out there who have successfully managed to negotiate and maintain a sleep-in/afternoon-kip schedule for the entire time they’ve been raising kids, but my research indicates the majority of us just soldier on half asleep and always just a little bit cross with each other because we just don’t ever feel, and let’s face it who does, that we get enough ZZZs.
Surely it’s about time someone came up with a therapy/bestselling-self-help book to help us navigate this sleepless hell.
I’m thinking, if I can squeeze in a nap right now, I might be able to come up with a good name for it.
