Pillow talk that divulges nothing
A woman approached me as I was trying to decide which duvet cover to purchase.
“What do you think of these microfibre ones?” she asked me.
She was holding a small package containing a sheet. I was stumped.
“Are they fleece?” I asked her. “I bought fleece sheets at Costco last year and oh my god in ever want to get out of bed .”
Granted, I’m not someone who has a hard time staying in bed, but still.
“Oh, Costco costs too much. I just want a fitted sheet, and thought I’d check here,” she said.
We were in a place that costs less than Costco. She made me feel the sheet through a little opening she’d made in the package. I remained stumped.
I needed a way to gently exit the conversation, not because I didn’t want to have it — I enjoy talking to strangers — but because I knew I couldn’t help her. I did not know what these microfibre sheets were that she spoke of, only that any time I buy cheap sheets nobody will use them so we take them to the cottage so nobody can use them there, either.
“I have no good guidance on this matter,” I told her. “I spend too much on sheets and bedding.”
I also spend way too much time in bed drinking wine and watching Netflix, but I wasn’t sure about revealing this to Microfibre Lady.
I was buying a new duvet cover because my favourite one, which is basically all white, was covered too often in cat footprints. Someone needs to make a duvet cover that is white with cat footprints. I’d buy that. In fact, I’d pay a lot for that. Anybody with cats knows you make adjustments when you have cats. When you see a dent in your pillow, you pretend the dent is the size of your head, not your cat’s butt.
People who sell bedding should know what else I’d pay extra for.
I’d pay extra to be able to see what the sheets look like when they’ve been washed a few times. I’d pay extra for a store to stop pretending that a duvet cover can be labelled “full/queen” when those are two different sizes.
I’d pay extra for all pillow cases to have that little fold over part on the end so the pillows don’t fall out. I’d pay extra for duvet covers to all have zippers, so when you wash them you don’t lose socks.
I don’t wash socks with sheets, and I turn duvet covers inside out but somehow socks always end up in the corners, as if the cover goes into my washing machine like some kind of giant sock-eating Pac Man.
But I would gladly hand back all of those things for this one: label the sheets. How can my jeans have four tags on them, shirts have tags in two different places, yet sheets, the biggest, most cumbersome things we handle remain a mystery? Why can’t they mark kingsized sheets as such on the label? Same with duvets and covers? There is already a label there; mark the size.
I have three bed sizes in the house, and three more at the cottage. We still have the Snoopy sheets Roz bought Gilly for her sixth birthday, and Christopher’s Thomas the Tank Engine ones. I have no problem remembering these don’t go on my bed, unless I’ve pulled the short straw and ended up in the bunks. At home, there is a deficit of cartoon characters to lead me in the right direction.
As I left I heard Microfibre Lady asking a sales clerk for an opinion. She had no clue, either.
I should have told her to buy Snoopy sheets.