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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.