Naps are for winners.

Naps are good for you, experts agree. They refresh the body and the mind, stimulate creativity and promote general well-being.

Thomas Edison didn’t sleep except for about three hours every night. What he did was take frequent naps. Look how that worked out for him.

Unluckily for me, I could never take naps. When I try, I wake up feeling all groggy; fragmented, like a broken toy; disoriented and in a lousy mood. Overall, in more than 40 years as a relative adult, I have taken four successful naps.

That’s it — four naps, a number I can hold up on the fingers of just one hand. And it’s not that I don’t try. I have tried to nap but could not find a perfect fit — I either sleep soundly for many hours, but then cannot fall asleep at night, or get 20 minutes of fitful rest and then I feel crappy for the next few hours. I have tried coffee naps — that’s when you’re supposed to drink coffee, nap for 15–20 minutes, then wake up just as the caffeine kicks into drive. However, I am caffeine insensitive, so that didn’t go very well: I just kept on sleeping, then woke up hours later really needing to take a pee.

Amy, my sister-by-marriage, is a great napper. She could lay down in early afternoon, sleep for less than 30 minutes, and wake up raring to go.

Honestly, I am jealous. I sort of feel like it’s my personal failure. I mean, I know it’s not, but still… What this actually feels like is my relationship to coffee. It’s cool to be a coffee drinker, and it’s actually good for you…