Naps Must Be Lived to Be Appreciated

So I’m lying on the couch with the Sports section spread over me like a blanket. A Sports section makes a nice blanket, especially on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

“Want a blanket, Dad?” asks the boy.

“I have a blanket,” I say.

“OK,” he says. “Just asking.”

He and his little sister are standing in front of the couch, watching me nap. They think if they wait long enough, something will happen, that I’ll suddenly spring up and offer to take them to a movie or a mall, salvaging this rainy day.

They don’t seem to understand that I’m committed to this nap, that naps are free and wonderful. And that, to a dad, a nap is a form of recreation.

“He’s napping,” my lovely and patient oldest daughter warns them from the hallway. “You’re just wasting your time.”

My oldest daughter has seen this kind of behavior before, her dad lounging on the couch in mid-February. He’ll start a rainy day like this by puttering around the house, emptying the pencil sharpener or organizing the junk drawer.

“This junk drawer is a mess,” he’ll grumble.

So he’ll spend the next hour trying to organize the junk drawer, maybe even sorting it alphabetically, before giving up and retreating to the couch, where he’ll mourn the end of football season and wait for the income tax refund to arrive. February can be kind of hard on a dad. No football. No money. All at once.

“The man is hibernating,” she tells her brother and sister. “He’s just hibernating.”

With that, my oldest daughter rolls her eyes and heads back to her room to finish packing for college.

My lovely and patient oldest daughter has been packing for college since the seventh grade. Now, at 14, she is nearly done. The trunk in the corner of the room is stuffed with jeans and T-shirts, just enough to get her through four years of college without ever having to do laundry.

“Dad, will you drive me now?” she calls from the hall.

“Where?”

“To college,” she says.

“Which one?”

“I don’t care,” she says. “Any one.”

She hasn’t cleared the ninth grade, but my oldest daughter is all set for college. She knows that in college there will be lots of people much like herself, really smart people who understand modem speeds and trigonometric functions and have not missed a single episode of “Dawson’s Creek.”

My oldest daughter thinks that she has earned an early trip to college, having lived in this house for 14 years, a place where nothing really happens, especially on rainy February afternoons.

“Stick around,” I mumble from under the Sports section. “Things are just starting to get exciting.”

For some reason, this doesn’t sway her. She knows there’s a better way to live.

In fact, she knows of people at this very moment--close friends of hers--skiing in the mountains, staying in fancy cabins and shopping in little alpine boutiques, paying three bucks for a Chap Stick and nine bucks for a cheeseburger, putting it all on their Gold Cards and living for today. Not next week or next month. Today.

I tell her that maybe she just needs a little nap, that maybe an afternoon of acting sleepy and middle-aged would do a teenager like her some good. In today’s fast-paced world, it couldn’t hurt a young person to act a little middle-aged now and then.

Besides, I tell her, middle age is really underrated.

“Just look at all the fun I’m having,” I say from the couch.

“I can’t wait to be middle-aged, Daddy,” says the little red-haired girl.

“Me too,” says her brother.

“See?” I say. “Middle age is getting pretty cool.”

My oldest daughter ignores me when I say this. More and more, she reacts to me like her mother, unable to mask the disappointment, staring off in the distance and wondering how this guy got into her life, wondering why you can pick your dentist and your doctor, but not your dad. Because if there was ever somebody you should have a choice over, it should be your dad.

“Are you really driving her to college?” asks her brother, still standing in front of the couch, waiting for something to happen.

“I’m driving everyone to college,” I say. “The whole bunch of you.”

“Yes!” shouts the little red-haired girl.

“Awesome!” shouts her brother.

I roll over on the couch, the Sports page rolling over with me.

“As soon as I’m done with this nap,” I say.

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* Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.