I am no good at napping. The rest of the robopet crusaders are back asleep; it’s 9:30 a.m. I couldn’t sleep if you paid me. I can occasionally sleep during the day if I haven’t slept well the night before, but I think that’s different. That’s just having the meal late; I can’t eat dessert.

My father was an excellent napper. If he had a comfy chair and five minutes, he would produce a beautiful nap . . . bone-shaking snores and all. My mother’s father, I remember, would nap on the floor of the pass-through between his kitchen and dining room, next to the gas heater and often under my grandmother’s feet as she tried to prepare lunch. My brother shares these traits; he sneaks stealth naps when the family gathers in my mom’s living room, and can sleep through the loudest of conversations. At holidays there are but two certainties: cousin Tammy will bring her incredible sweet potato souffle, and, as soon as lunch is over, the host’s house will look like the triage scene from Gone With the Wind — guys draped over the furniture and sprawled across the floor wall-to-wall.

What I’m saying is that I have good nap genes — I’m just a mutant. It has always been this way.

My mother went back to work when I was about four, and I went to a neighbor’s in-home daycare. There was no way I was going to sleep, so we struck a bargain. Once The Price is Right was over and we had eaten lunch, I lay down with the other kids until they were asleep. Then I got to drink Dr. Pepper and hang out with Ms. Dot and her chihuahua Fifi in the kitchen.

And so it is today. I am a napless wonder — the best shotgun ever on road trips, but as a driver, doomed to be lonely, staring at the road and searching the dial for a decent station amid the myriad country and top 40 signals.