Caught During the Intermission

"Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

I took a light nap the other afternoon; just an insignificant one. My mother telephoned in the middle of it. She is staying with her brother and his family for the night and I could hear them all chirping away merrily in the background.
"Do you have a cold?" Mater said to me after a minute or two of rather one-sided discussion based on the fact of my attempting to recover myself quickly.
"No, no I do not," I said with indignation.
"You sound a bit...different," she probed.
"Do I?"
"Yes. Your voice is a bit strange. You don't have a cold?"
"No."
"Really?"
I blustered that I had been sleeping when she telephoned and I might, possibly, be a bit hazy yet.
"Ah," she said knowingly and triumphantly. "I knew something was different."
It did not end there.
She thrust the phone at my aunt and we talked for a moment or two. It was very pleasant.
"So, you have a cold?" she said sympathetically.
"No," I insisted. "I have no cold. I was lying down. I was sleeping."
And then from somewhere behind her I could hear another voice saying something about 3:20 in the afternoon and taking naps.
There are lessons to be had here. The ocean is no barrier to a mother's intuition; never take naps in the daytime without unplugging the phone; and lastly, always admit to a cold in times of crisis, thereby saving face and gaining pity.