Must… Have… Siesta

It’s August in Memphis. It’s hot. And it’s humid, so the heat is swampy hot. Oppressive.

The heat index yesterday was 106 degrees, and it is supposed to reach 110 today. The overnoght “lows” are still in the 80’s. I suppose that most people have at some point in their lives felt over-100-degree heat. But if you’ve never lived in a place where those temperatures are sustained for days, and weeks, on end, then I’m not sure that you can really appreciate the misery of it. When August arrives in Memphis, it’s almost as if you can hear a collective groan and see people steeling themselves for the “dog days” ahead. Everyone knows it’s going to miserable and everyone knows it’s going to be long, and everyone knows that there’s nothing that can be done about it. I mean, it’s over a hundred degrees outside! (Just wanted to repeat that for added emphasis.) Most people I know, around this time of year, are forced to walk out of the room during the weather forecast part of the evening news. The forecast is always the same: many, many more days of the same. I feel sorry for the TV weather guys– they look so sorry and so pitiful. There are definitely days when, in the futility of it all, I want to shoot the messenger myself.

There was a story on NPR this morning on the merits of the siesta. It turns out that, earlier this year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health studied Greeks and found that those who partake in the afternoon nap have a lower risk of heart disease. And, similarly, scientists at the University of Manchester have found neurological benefits to the siesta. Neither of these studies has much to do with the heat of the afternoon, but rather the finer points of the biological process known as the postprandial dip. So, let me offer another argument in praise of the siesta.

When it gets as hot as is does here in August, you can’t move. You can’t think. You can’t even breathe since the air is so thick that it feels like you could cut it with a knife. In the afternoons here in Memphis, people just scurry from one air-conditioned refuge to another. And, even still, there is no AC system adequate to counter the raging beast outside. So, I say, take a nap… and dream of cooler places.

We Southerners could take a pointer or two from our sub-tropical comrades in the “global” South. As it says in the Good Book: