Just In Time For Halloween

Do you make-up your bed?

It is a chore taught early in life and becomes a routine.

Why?

Are your parents coming over and will be disappointed by seeing you failed them? Are you trying to impress someone to join you between the sheets?

Are you trying to sell your house?

At camp before you put on your sneakers or brush your teeth, the first responsibility is to make up your cot. The same is true in the armed services to the point where authorities other than your parents will check and if not approved will have to be ‘re-made’ until right.

You are not actually making your bed because that would require springs and padding and sewing, you are just putting make-up on your bed in linens and covers.

So when you wake up and shake the cobwebs off and get dressed and go about your daily business, what does the bed do?

Like your toaster or television or toilet, it just sits there until put to use again.

Unless you are sick or have an active sex life, your bed as well as your bedroom is doing nothing but gathering dust until the lights go out.

Does it impress you to pull back the covers every night like a freshly made bed in a hotel?

A bed is a comfort to climb under your sheets and cuddle with a pillow. When exhausted, it doesn’t matter if the sheets have hospital corners or the blanket perfectly lined. It is a place to lie down and rest. Get off your feet; close your eyes and dream.

If living in a Martha Steward world, the bedroom must look like House Beautiful and one must spend hours dusting and vacuuming and straightening. What a waste of limited time.

Now your bed knows you better than any other piece of household items. The bedroom is the sanctuary within the sanctuary of the home. Only the bathroom is as private but you don’t want to sleep in there.

The bedroom is the place where secret conversations are whispered. The bed relaxes the tired muscles and the sheets absorb the sweat and dirt of the day. Tossing and turning with the frustrations of the day, you bed only bounces back like a prizefighter taking a punch and waiting for the bell.

How does this tie into Halloween?

Halloween is our celebrations of ghost and goblins and things that go bump in the night. We decorate out houses with fake spider webs, tombstones, skeletons and sheets for ghost. The same sheets that adorned your most personal contact are now hung out to display your dirty laundry.

If an un-made-up bed was a sign to friends that your household was not acceptable to established values are you shamed? The same would be true for dirty dishes or leftover toys shrewd on the floor.

Now remember in keeping with the season, the sheets know you. They wrap around your body every night. A stack of blankets and comforters pile upon that and your soft pillows engulf your head.

There is no stretch of the imagination of the ghost sheets strangling you with the other covers suffocating the last nightmare. 

Ever wake up in a sweat and the room is littered with pillows and sheets? 

What kinds of battle took place during the sleeping hours?

Nighty, night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.