If you wanted to ensure your swift and sure death in my house all you
had to do was interrupt nap time. It was not held at a specific hour
or for a certain duration but the amorphous temporal nature was part
of the challenge. At some point my mom would announce that it was nap
time and she and anyone else who felt like taking a nap would lay
down for a while. If, god help you, you woke her up before she
naturally stirred from her afternoon repose there was swift and
painful justice administered to your bottom. When nap time was over
sometimes she would tell us sometimes she would just start puttering
around inside the house while we were still under full lock-down mode
unknowingly acting civilized for extended periods without cause. The
rules didn't apply for the kids who may have laid down to rest at the
same time they were on their own because the dome of spank-punishable
sleep protection retracted as soon as mom was up and from that
instant on nothing was sacred. My dad on the other hand was not so
rigidly ritualistic about when or where he took naps he would just
lay down in the middle of the living room and fall asleep. If you are
unfamiliar with mobile homes the living room is not a place apart so
much as a widening of the main hall way/entryway/main room. You would
walk in and find him supine, snoring and feet elevated on a couch
many times. It was terrible to try and walk around him without
touching him or making a noise to get to the back and use the
bathroom or phone or go to your room. It was like an overly contrived
game where an ogre is asleep in the middle of the path and you need
to move slowly and then hold still and silent when he rustled.
