My pal, Penney, once told me that when she was a kid, and her family went on vacation, they would “drop the spoon” every afternoon. I knew this was a cousin of the disco nap, but I never knew it was a purported invention of Salvador Dalí, (according to QuestionSwap):
Lie down or sit in comfy seat holding a spoon in your fingertips. you should be holding it in a way that - when you loose consciousness (sleep) you drop it… the Clatter (put a big plate on the floor under your hand) will wake you…. and you get woken JUST as you enter the best “dreamy” bit of your sleep.
Related (though pretty insane, if you’re asking me) is the notorious “Thomas Edison Nap,” which, repeated through the day, is intended to stand in lieu of an actual solid night’s sleep (and which seems to have partly inspired some of the polyphasic sleep nutjobs proponents). Edison is said to have naturally needed less sleep in a day, and seldom slept very much in a given stretch, claiming that excessive sleep was a sign of laziness — and yet:
[His] co-workers noted that Edison actually slept far more than he would like to admit. Clearly, he would carry sleeping little as a badge of honor. He catnapped a lot, and his nap cots have been preserved to this day in Edison museums.
But — being a layabout and lardbrick of some considerable renown — Your Author finds himself much more attracted to the other end of the spectrum, where we find the “Winston Churchill Nap.” This is something I first learned about from mathowie, and which the great man describes himself:
You must sleep some time between lunch and dinner, and no half-way measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more.
Yeah. That’s more my speed. Winston knew how to nap.