Three letters to "Judge" John Hodgeman

[conuly]

Note - he's more of a humor columnist than an advice columnist most of the time, but that's what makes him my hands-down fave. In these letters he actually gives some trenchant advice.

1. Emily writes: I have a dispute with my husband, Leonard, over bedsheets. I say the end of the top sheet with the wider hem should be up near the pillows. He routinely places it in any other direction and then falls asleep, so I can’t fix it. This forces me to sleep with a wrong-way sheet, which haunts me. Please order him to do it right.

This all depends on what kind of Leonard you married. I suspect that he knows how to make the bed properly, as I equally suspect that you would not marry a fool. But this leads me to the darker suspicion: that Leonard is doing it wrong on purpose in hopes that you’ll eventually bar him from even trying. I’ll make the order you request, but let me know if he comes up with new ways of getting it wrong. If you find him making a blanket fort or curling up inside the fitted sheet in the middle of the bare mattress, claiming, “It all looks the same when you’re sleeping,” we’ll both know what kind of Leonard he is.

Link one

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2. James writes: My partner, Allie, refuses to accept the possibility that our cat, Bookitty, ate two of our pet guppies. The four guppies — Turbo, Wobbles, Kickflip and Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville — were adopted for my 29th birthday. A few months later, Kickflip went missing, followed shortly by Turbo! I contend that it is at least possible that our cat ate them. Allie believes the other two guppies did it.

I’m no guppy expert. I don’t even know if “Fabian” at guppyexpert.com is a guppy expert. But enough poking around there suggests that male guppies can indeed get bitey when crowded. Does this exonerate Bookitty? Not really. But even if you had video evidence of Bookitty gleefully slurping Turbo and Kickflip down the hatch, Heathcliff style, the true murderer is you. Wobbles and J.B.M. might be monsters. But they need you to help them live as much as they need cute names. Consult a real guppy expert about tank size. (And get a camera on them. I don’t trust Bookitty either.)

Link two

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3. Sean writes: My partner and I have an argument about the novel “Cujo.” She thinks the idea of being trapped in a car by a dog is terrifying. I haven’t read the book, but I’m familiar with the overall scenario, and I don’t think it would be a big deal. Has Stephen King ever met a dog before? At some point it will fall asleep!

The tragedy of “Cujo” is that Cujo is a good dog who makes one bad decision (chasing a rabbit into a cave of rabid bats), loses his mind and ends up hurting the people he loves — just like you! In your blind desire to win a dumb fight, you ran to a national newspaper to madly proclaim: “I am great at literally judging a book by its cover!” When all you had to do was read “Cujo.” It’s very quick and, I think, King’s most affecting novel. You may disagree. But until then I envy your first experience of it, and I hope the ending destroys you as much as it did me, as that is what you deserve.

Link three

Comments

[conuly]

1. Separate beds, Emily. Separate beds.

2. Agreed, the tank is probably not big enough and there ought to be some sort of cover to keep the cat from getting in. This is the responsibility of the humans to sort out - not any of their pets.

3. I'm guessing Sean doesn't have much experience with rabies, which is a dick of a disease and which I'm betting can absolutely keep a dog both alive and awake far longer than the poor animal would like.

[ysobel]

Also part of the Cujo situation was that the weather was warm, so they were feeling increasing effects of heat.

[azurelunatic]

My partner and I have separate blankets on the same bed. It's the only way for us to share a bed without someone freezing because someone else has stolen the blankets.

[movingfinger]

1. Emily, my ex would do this. It was a symptom of so many other problems. Leonard has chosen to play stupid here, so you can play along. Yank the sheet off, wake him up, and have him help you make the bed correctly, very slowly and meticulously with a lot of instruction on getting the corners just right. When the bed is made, pull it apart again and have him do it himself while you watch.

The top of the sheet has a wider edge to fold over the blankets to keep them clean and to make it wear longer (narrow seams are not as durable). You can purchase sheets with wide decorative tops in order to make it easier to distinguish the sides for poor wee Leonard.

[conuly]

Probably easier to break up with him than to ask him to remake the bed.

[cereta]

#3 Man, I thought I'd left people who knew everything about Stephen King novels without reading a single one behind two English departments ago.

[conuly]

I think you're safe so long as you don't decide to date Sean.

[melannen]

1, Emily, the most important question is: which side of the top sheet does he think should be toward the blankets, and which toward the mattress? Because I've been subjected to the most terrible disparagements for doing it the correct way.

[conuly]

I notice you don't intend to tell us which way that is...!

[melannen]

The *correct* way, of course!

Look, I just don't want to be called perverse and wrong by someone whose opinions I used to respect again. :P

[conuly]

I have no opinions on this subject, I promise. My opinion is "Sure, it's nice if somebody makes the bed, I guess".

[melannen]

Well, in that case: if the sheet has a clear "front" and "back" side, the "front" side should go down, so that the front sides of the two sheets are together. That way when you fold it back over the blanket, like movingfinger said, the "front" is what shows, plus it keeps the front side (and the nicer side of the hems) against the skin.

Some people seem to feel very strongly that the correct way is "upside-down" and they can't sleep in a bed like that, though, so I have some sympathy for LW's husband even though he's wrong about the top hem.

[feldman]

You're absolutely correct in my view.

[melannen]

Thank you for being correct.

[sporky_rat]

I find you are only correct if you fold the sheet and blankets back down. You you choose not to do so (you covered your pillow with the entire layer to prevent that cat sleeping on it), the front of the sheet faces the blanket.

[melannen]

Even if you don't fold it down for all day, it's what shows when you pull the covers back to get in! If you put the printed side up you never see it at all.

[pensnest]

As a duvet and fitted sheet user, I have no dog in this fight. I just wanted to reply to your icon.

[ambyr]

This is a point of fierce disagreement between my partner and I (I want the patterned side up, because I frequently sleep without a blanket and make the bed with only the sheet). The solution has been to . . . not buy patterned sheets.

[melannen]

Even then, the seam side of the top hem is against your neck that way, ugh!

Admittedly it's a little more valid if you don't have anything on top of the sheet. Which is less necessary in an age when houses aren't as full of soot and smoke. But if I don't have at least a coverlet I don't bother making the bed at all.

[edenfalling]

I agree with you 100%.

[melannen]

Thank you for being correct.

[eyebrowofdoom]

I also feel you are completely correct.

[azurelunatic]

My opinion about sheets is less strong than my opinion about feather comforters. My opinion is: washable layer between the cat and the comforter, and washable layer between the human and the comforter.

[full_metal_ox]

As long as we’re in Pissily Opinionated Wank Mode: who the hell names a guppy “Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville”—-which sounds like the sort of name you’d give a pedigreed show dog? (And is there some prior unBuffetted Margaritaville we need to disambiguate from?)

(In the process of answering my own question, I learned this: https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/margaritaville.pdf)

[dissectionist]

“Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville” is far more hilarious than just calling the guppy “Margaritaville”. The length of text of the former is probably longer than the guppy itself, which makes it even funnier. Giving such a ponderous name to a pedigreed show dog would make sense, but the absolute incongruity of giving it to a guppy is amazing.

[full_metal_ox]

Fair enough. I should disclose that the song has become something of a personal allergen, being the unofficial anthem of the coastal Florida town where I’ve reluctantly moved; this place is an echo chamber of white boomer Top 40 comfort music, and I keep getting subjected to the same damn algorithmic playlist of a couple dozen albums, interspersed with post 9/11 country.

[dissectionist]

That sounds brutal, and your ears have my deepest sympathy.

[dissectionist]

Since we’re all posting opinions: flat sheets go straight into the fabric bin, not on beds*. My comfort level is just the duvet inside a duvet cover and nothing else, unless it’s too cold, in which case additional blankets go on top of the duvet cover. Sheets are too thin and prone to twisting around your body during the night, thereby waking you because you’re all tangled up. Duvets inside duvet covers don’t do that and so they are superior.

* Except for the guest bed, because a lot of people are used to having a flat sheet, and I don’t want to put our guests out by having a different bedclothes setup than what they’re used to.

[ethelmay]

I would much rather change sheets than wrestle a duvet in and out of its cover so often, and I would want to have a top sheet handy in case the duvet was too warm anyway. (Usually I have three coverings for my bed, a top sheet, a cotton quilt, and a wool quilt, and pull different ones over me as needed.)

[dissectionist]

Ah, I am a frozen wasteland of a body, so my only variance in my all-season duvet is whether there’s one flannel blanket on top (summertime), two flannel blankets (spring/fall), or two flannel blankets and a wool blanket (wintertime). Nothing but a sheet would mean I’d be up all night shivering. But I also can’t have the blankets directly against my skin, because both flannel and wool are uncomfortable to me.

[melannen]

Same.

Duvets make some sense in places where it's never going to be too warm for a duvet at night, but that is not how it works where I live (I am also an icicle of a person but that changes when the nighttime temps go over 80 deg F). And even then I'd give a lot to not have to deal with a duvet cover ever again.

[full_metal_ox]

My turn: the only bed linens that should be tucked under are the layers that go beneath the sleeper: the mattress cover and the fitted sheet. I do not care to sleep in an envelope.

(Bedtime in a hotel begins with dismantling the housekeepers’ careful handiwork (and discarding most of the bed coverings and pillows, since the hotel bed presentations I’ve encountered, even in the dead of summer, usually seem to have been anticipating the arrival of Queen Elizabeth during a January blizzard.) One blanket and one sheet, to be adjusted at will, since my thermoregulation sucks; one pillow for under my head; one to elevate my legs; one as a platform for my plush traveling companions. All else is excess.)

[lilysea]

I spend a lot of time awake in bed

either sitting propped up in bed reading or internet

or lying on my stomach in bed reading or internet

and flat sheets are perfect for that layer that needs to go between

the loose electric heated throw rug (which is great in winter, or for muscle aches/pains)

and my skin

1. so I don't have to wash the throw rug

2. so the synthetic fibres of the throw rug don't annoy my skin (which can't cope with anything except cotton/bamboo directly touching it)

[dissectionist]

I would definitely not want to wash a throw rug either. I have an electrically heated bed liner (goes between mattress and fitted sheet) and that is a lovely and wondrous thing in the non-summer seasons!