Making the Bed

“You made your bed, now sleep in it!”

That’s right. I did make the bed. It’s now my job.

My first experience in bed-making was as an eight-year-old at a boy’s camp in western Virginia, called Camp Lake Pocahontas. We slept on wooden beds with a mattress, some sheets, a pillow, and a blanket. Each morning after revelry, we made our beds which were later inspected by the Camp Counselors. They came in each cabin and dropped quarters on the bed blanket and if they didn’t bounce high enough, meaning the blanket was not taut, your cabin was given the “Old Shoe”, which meant you went last in line at mealtime that day. So, I learned at an early age how to make my bed.

As a teen, Mom also made us make our beds, but I quickly figured out that if you just barely shimmied beneath the blanket and didn’t disturb the sheets, your bed was essentially made the next morning when you shimmied out.

Once married, my bed-making responsibilities went away. Nancy did not trust my “hospital corners.” For many years, I was off the hook in the bed-making department, but things have since changed.

Not long ago, we bought a new mattress. It is extra firm and weighs about as much as a Volkswagen Beetle with a full tank of gas and extra batteries in the trunk. It is a beast.

My wife, Nancy, has strict orders from her orthopedic surgeon not to lift anything heavier than a bag of sugar, and she was clearly unable to lift the sides of the bed, so I have returned to official bed-making duties. Lifting the mattress was awkward, but not a huge problem. On the other hand, dealing with those %#!@!  fitted sheets was a big-time problem.

Whoever came up with fitted sheets must have married Satan’s sister. There seems to be no top, bottoms or sides to the bottom fitted sheet. It is a shapeless blob and who know what goes where?

Finding one of the corners is the first step in a morning laced with profanity. The corners love to hide in the middle of the blob and sometimes you think there are no corners whatsoever. But ultimately you find one and slip it on the end of the mattress and hope it’s where it’s supposed to be. But when you go around to the other side of the bed and there’s an extra 4-feet of sheet hanging over, that means you got the wrong corner on the wrong side. Back to square one where you shift the blob around hoping for a match. Sometimes you get it and sometimes you don’t. But once the fitted sheet is finally in place, the rest is easy. The top sheet has a hemmed border, and you know where it goes. All you have to do then is tuck in the bottom and get the sides to more or less match in length.

These days, when I see Nancy strip the bed and heads for the laundry room, I take a couple extra valiums because I know what’s coming next.