So the other day, I was daydreaming about Husbandrinka’s demise and wondering about the men that I would start dating after an appropriate waiting period. Would I get a boy toy and become a cougar? Or would I hook up with a geriatric kazillionaire? It’s hard to say, because who knows which way the winds of love will blow. And besides, I’m in mourning.
But then I started to seethe and fume because I knew that no matter who I became involved with, we’d have the same problem that I’ve had with every person that I’ve ever shared a bed with.
The top sheet.
Because the world is divided into two types of people–the sane, who prefer the top sheet not tucked in underneath the mattress, and the insane, who like to recreate the feeling of being restrained in an asylum and want the top sheet tucked in so that their feet are trapped and don’t get any oxygen. (There’s also a third type of person, ones who like rye bread, but I can’t even get into that level of emotional instability.)
And I seem to attract the people who like being trapped in the sheet.
It took me years to get Husbandrinka to see the error of his ways.
“It’s cozy,” he may have argued. (“May have” because who the hell can remember? The insane sheet ramblings of many all merge into one huge ball of nonsense.)
“Cozy?!” I shrieked. “Your feet need to move around at night and be free! They need to breathe!”
“Feet breathe?”
“Of course feet breathe! Otherwise they die.” I was becoming a little less confident as I went along, but I didn’t want to lose momentum. “Like those women in China.”
“That’s foot binding,” suddenly he became a historian.
“Yes, but that’s how it starts. They make little girls sleep with the top sheet tucked under the mattress and then they get used to less mobility. It’s a slippery slope.”
Thank goodness I had history on my side.
But I’m not sure that I have the energy to go through the whole magila with a new partner.
One year ago ...
- The Week - 2012