I need a nap and I’m unable to take one. There’s nothing external that is preventing me from catching a few proverbial winks. It’s all psychological. I know it. And it all started in Tiny Tots.

I loved school the minute I entered the classroom sporting my Buster Brown hairdo. Here I am with Mom around that time modeling our almost-identical outfits. Mom made the pants. (Is anyone else having a Brady Bunch fashion nightmare flashback? Um, yeah.

The only thing I didn’t like about school was the mandatory nap time. I wanted to play! I wanted to draw! (I didn’t like finger-painting because it was messy. Eww.) I didn’t come to school to sleep, but sleep was what I was supposed to do, right after the milk and stale Graham crackers. While some kids were peacefully sleeping and others were pinching or punching each other, I was staring at the ceiling, wide awake, counting the minutes until this nonsense was over.

This inability to nap has followed me into adulthood. The only time I can sleep during daylight is (a) if I’m really sick, or (b) if I’m really hung over. And since I haven’t had a hang over in well over a decade, that option is really out. I know there are supposedly all kinds of benefits to napping: increased productivity, better memory, reduction in stress and less overall crankiness around one and all. I have friends who are prolific nappers and I’m thrilled to bits for them. Truly, I am. I bet they are such smart, productive, calm, fun people to be around. I’d know for sure if I wasn’t so sleepy and cranky all the time and actually left my house to visit them.

I decided to look for inspiration from my favorite humorist, Robert Benchley. He wrote and starred in many comedy shorts in the 1930s and early 1940s and his How to Sleep won an Oscar in 1936. I knew I could count on ‘ol Bob. He wouldn’t let me down. Well, the results were decidedly mixed. He failed at the task of actually helping me fall asleep but he succeeded as he always does, at making me laugh.

I tried listening to ocean sounds, but that reminded me of sand and sand is dirty and dangerous. My mother, who thought that all San Francisco beaches were littered with hypodermic needles and other disgusting things, drummed this belief into my head. So, ocean sounds. Not that restful.

I experimented with eye masks and earplugs to no avail. Maybe it’s just me but rendering myself blind and deaf is not conducive to restful sleep. It sounds like a plot to a really bad slasher movie. Besides, the earplugs amplified the sound of my heart beating into my ears and that made me think of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. So not helping.

So, I sit here yawning and watching the bags under my eyes turn into matching luggage while my cat Bella sleeps. It’s in moments like these where being a human with human problems is highly overrated. In my next life, I want to come back as a pampered cat. Maybe I’ll finally get some rest.