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| "AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HUMOR"TM
SHOWCASE
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April / May 2006 Contest Results |
My Name Is
Wendy And I'm A Napaholic
By Wendy Sang Kelly, South Carolina
I swear, new
parents can be so competitive, always comparing what their babies did
and when. “Susie walked at eight months.” (Yeah, right.) “Junior here
was potty-trained at six months.” (And probably wet the bed till
college, bless his heart.)
I’ve even heard
moms comparing how fast they lost all their baby weight. “Would you
believe I wore my pre-pregnancy jeans home from the hospital?” (Oh, I’m
so happy for you... more pound cake?)
My favorite of these not-so-subtle contests by far is called, “How-old-was-your-little-darlin’-when-he-or-she-first-slept-through-the-night?”
And I confess the reason I love it is because I’m usually the undisputed
winner (some might say loser, but I prefer to stay positive).
Whenever I overhear one of these conversations, I try to horn right in.
First, I listen sympathetically to their stories. (It took six weeks,
you say? How positively dreadful! How did you ever survive?) Then I fish
around, dropping hints until someone finally asks me to share with the
group: How old were my little ones when that blissful day finally
arrived?
Then, with as much nonchalance as I can muster, I reply, “Hmmm... let’s
see... oh, that’s right: sixty-seven months.”
Folks, we have a winner! Ding, ding!
I get a big kick out of dropping that little bombshell, but sometimes it
takes a minute or two to for people to absorb. Sixty-seven months? Is
she kidding? They try to be polite, hoping that I am, in fact, joking.
Then their compassion gives way to alarm. Am I a liar or a lunatic, they
wonder? Or worse, a crazy broad who’s spawning a mutant strain of
nocturnal babies. Run for your lives! It might be contagious!
During all those endless nights, I tried to use the time wisely, which
mostly involved fantasizing about the day my girls would both be in
school, as I planned to sleep for six months straight. The only drawback
to my plan, as far as I could tell, being the fact that hibernation
isn’t considered normal human behavior, and if you attempt it, some
well-meaning yet meddlesome neighbor might just make a call to social
services. So I settled for the next best thing -- chronic napping.
Frankly, I’d choose a nap over just about anything... shopping, sex,
even Krispy Kremes. I take that back... naps and Krispy Kremes are dead
even. And actually, if I really tried, I bet I could scarf down a few
K2’s while napping. (Which is why I pay one of my kids to hide the box
-- it’s in everyone’s best interest, especially my thighs.)
So I make an effort to squeeze a nap into each and every day, no matter
what. Which is probably why I lost my job as an air traffic-controller.
I’m kidding. It was all those cocktails that got me fired. (Note to
self: when drinking martinis out of your coffee cup, skip the olives.
Too obvious.)
One of the best things about naps -- other than the actual sleeping, of
course -- is the dreams. They’re way better than the ones you get at
night. In nap dreams, sometimes I can talk to animals. Sometimes I can
fly. Always, I am a size 4. Nap dreams put you in touch with your
limitless potential. You can crochet trendy sweaters out of dryer lint,
for example. Or live in a mansion made of chocolate ganache and
marshmallow fluff. Or be a Gucci-clad superhero saving the world from a
hostile Amazonian celebutante who relies on a diet of human brains and
media attention to fuel her diabolical plans for world domination. You
get my point.
I hardly ever have nightmares during my naps, either. Except once during
an unusually long nap, I dreamt my boss was screaming at me to pack my
stuff and hit the road. Wait... that really happened.
Thirty (okay, ninety) short minutes later, I wake up feeling completely
refreshed and ready to tackle the remainder of the day. You’d be
surprised how much I can accomplish in fifteen or twenty minutes!
Thoroughly rested from my nap, I feel ready to take on the world! I am
invincible! I can do anything!
Except, of course, find the stinkin’ Krispy Kremes.
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