Resting in a hammock is probably the single most inactive thing a person can do during waking hours. If there existed such a thing as a Sloth Index, it would rank 11 on a 1-to-10 scale. If you're sitting on a couch, by contrast, you're at least watching TV. That's not much, but compared to being in a hammock, it's practically building the pyramids of Giza. You're so not doing anything, you've practically achieved an enlightened state in some cultures. You're not even watching anything, except maybe the beer drop from your hand as you doze off to sleep while, quote, reading.

I'm convinced that the only reason people take a book with them into a hammock, in fact, is so they don't have to feel guilty that they aren't doing anything. If furniture were physics, the hammock would be inertia.

The most taxing thing about a hammock is getting in it. You sit on the edge of it, lean into it and upward, so your head is at one end and your feet are at the other. It's more or less like getting into bed, except that you swing back and forth. The worst that can happen is that you didn't center yourself and you spill over the side. You won't hurt yourself because you're only about a foot off the ground. But you might spill some of your beer. That is why I've always said, and will now say again, that hammocks should come with instructions.

The unpracticed hammock guy needs to know what could happen in the event that he doesn't center himself properly. A beer is a terrible thing to waste.

Notice I used the words "guy" and "he." Normally, I use the masculine pronoun not because some grammarians argue that it is still preferred over the feminine pronoun or the dreaded he/she construct, but because I am thoughtless. Not this time. This time, I thought about it a lot. And what I thought was this: Hammocks are to men what shoes are to women - a passion.