Dean Poling

I never understood the appeal of a grown man falling asleep in a chair.

At least, as a boy, I never understood the appeal.

Visits with my grandparents on a Sunday afternoon, after a big dinner, were often punctuated with the snores of my grandfathers, dozing in their favorite chairs, their heads slightly back on their necks (or slightly forward on their chests), their mouths slightly open, their bodies leaning slightly to one side, their eyes fully closed.

Their limbs had become loose things. Their arms hanging from slumped shoulders, suspended by chair arms. Their legs either outstretched with help of a recliner or bent like the calves may slip from their knees and clatter to the floor.

My grandfathers were very different men but they both seemed to enjoy a nap in a chair.

My grandmothers were very different women but both apparently didn’t care to see a man sleeping in a chair – given the ways they usually prodded my grandfathers awake from Sunday afternoon naps.

Growing older, I noticed that many men enjoyed a nap in a chair. As a younger man, I did not appreciate the position of the sleeping man in a chair. If you were going to nap, why not stretch out on a couch? Which is a fine thing, indeed. But as a younger man, I did not comprehend the appeal of all this napping. There was too much to do. There was a great urgency to get up and go.

I think it is that underlying urgency of get up and go, which in time becomes more of a man’s mindset rather than a compelling force from within him, that makes sleeping in a chair so attractive.

Unlike stretching out fully clothed on a couch or getting undressed for bed, falling asleep in a chair is not a planned activity. Or at least you can claim it is not a planned activity.

That’s important.

You can maintain the status of being a man of action, a man interested in the world around him, a man who is not lazy, a man who does not plan to spend a part of his waking hours, or burn daylight, sleeping.

No. These are not the idle plans of the busy, hard-working man asleep in a chair. This man sat down to watch television, read a book, give his dinner a few moments to digest, look over finances, visit with family or friends, ponder the meaning of life … then the blurred blink-blink of sweet, sweet blissful sleep.

A man asleep in a chair hasn’t sought sleep rather sleep has caught up with him.

Sleep has crawled along the long hours of his efforts, the stresses of family and work, and caught him, captured him at a moment when he has stopped moving. Sleep has targeted him and, well, caught him napping.

Of course, sometimes, the man is so hard-working that sleep doesn’t just capture him sitting in his favorite chair. It can creep up on him in a church pew, the office desk, the theatre seat. The only escape for the hard-working man is to not sit, but rather to spend all of his waking hours standing, but even the most hard-working of men, despite his best efforts to remain standing and on the move, must sit occasionally.

If he didn’t, sleep may strike him at the dinner table in mid-chew, while his mouth is full of supper and that just won’t do. The hard-working man must have food to fuel his energies.

I reached the age long ago of dozing off in my favorite chair, or even a not-so-favorite chair. Really, almost any chair will do. Sleep comes unbidden. Sleep comes fast. Sleep comes like a thief in the night … or in the early evening … or in the afternoon.

I’ll be reading a book, watching a show or talking to someone then that blurry sweetness of sleep descends. There are times when sleeping in a chair – I have learned through rigorous experimentation – is more refreshing than a full night’s sleep in a bed.

Yet, this is an admission made with some reluctance. There is a bit of denial that comes with the territory of dozing in a chair.

My wife will point out I am snoring. I wasn’t snoring, you must be hearing things.

Then she will tell me how long I have been sleeping, or ask the last thing I remember in a television show, to which I respond with the time-honored answer: I’m not sleeping. Just resting my eyes.

Dean Poling is a former editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and The Tifton Gazette.