Top Sheet

OK.  If you have spent any time with me in the last couple months, then you knew this day was coming.   You knew I was going to have to speak to this topic.  You were waiting, and the moment is here.  Let us clear the air – once and for all.  Let us whisper no longer…we must finally come forward and discuss the forbidden:

Top Sheets.

I know.  Mothers everywhere just shuddered.  Take a moment.  Collect yourself.  And just know - I am on your side.  Don’t stop reading. 

Top Sheets Are Bad.

Is that better?  Feel safer now?  Better understood?  Yeah.  Me, too.   I’m glad you’re here.  Let’s just yell it together,  

TOP SHEETS BOP SCHMEETZ!

Feels good, right?  Totally.  Have another bite of donut.

Marriages are suffering because of this, people.  Don’t let it get you.

Husband comes home from his 14-day hitch, and right after he walks in and gets pummeled by hugs, he puts down his bag and walks around.  Of course, he does not SAY he is walking around to survey his kingdom. He pretends he is looking for something.  But, whatever dude - he is walking around the house, assessing its condition.  It’s an inspection.  This used to make me want to maim him, but I have gotten past my violent impulses, and now I just “joke” about maiming him, and it is joking…even though I don’t laugh when I am saying it…or even smile…and I’m rolling my eyes…but I am starting to think my eye rolling is involuntary, and maybe I should just go get that checked out.

Anyways, usually, we know exactly when Husband is coming in, so we have ample time to construct the lie.  I mean, if my hardworking husband needs to think we are neat and tidy people in his absence, then who am I to rob him of this fantasy?  In truth, the kids do NOT makes massive messes when Husband is home, so he does not truly know with whom he is dealing.  I don’t want, at this advanced stage in the child-rearing experience, to be the one to tell him that we (the kids and I) have merely resigned ourselves to being disgusting.  It’s not unlike kids believing in the tooth fairy.  You just do all you can to keep that going for them as long as you can, but one day you are busted putting money under their pillow, and the fantasy comes crashing down.  You feel awful.  They feel confused.  Let’s just put that off as long as possible. 

The morning of the day-dad-is-coming-home is an arduous one:  up early; wet rags under the feet, scooting around; kids scooting around with rags under their butts – human Swiffers…Swiffering all over the place.  The floors need to be shiny and foreign-object-free.  Floors are an important component of creating the illusion. 

When a dirty, smelly man steps foot in a house, after living in a man camp for two weeks, he looks out from the entryway and sees shiny sparkling hardwood floors, and with immense satisfaction and pride, he thinks, “I married the right woman.”  Seriously.  It is THAT easy.  Shiny floors = Good Woman.  Don’t say I didn’t tell you.

Clean floors are paramount.

And, of course, the sink should be dish-free because, in the fantasy, kids apparently don’t eat.

But, did you know…DID YOU KNOW…that top sheets belong on beds?  Read that again.  Top.  Sheets.  Belong.  On Beds. 

I know.  It’s almost funny, if it weren't so perplexing.  

Let me explain this.  Okay.  I will break it all the way down.  So, your kid has a mattress, you know, that big foamy thing they pee into.  Yes.  That.  Ours are baby blue with “watermarks.”  Ours are so “watermarked” that when we move into a new house, and we have people come help us move, my husband hides in the house when it is time to move the mattresses because HE thinks that OUR KIDS are the ONLY ones who have ever peed into a mattress, and he cannot be there for that horrifying moment when the people who have come to help us DISCOVER that OUR KIDS PEE. 

.

Yes.  So, your kid has a mattress, and you cover that with a mattress pad.  Some people cover it with a waterproof mattress pad, but that just makes kids sweat when they sleep, or at least that is what my kids claim, and so we just cover our mattresses with a basic white mattress pad, and this, too, will always and forever reek of urine.  Sorry.   

Okay.  So, mattress…mattress pad…and then, you put a bottom sheet over that mattress pad.  They are the ones with the elastic.  Yes.  You take that bottom sheet and you stretch it out over the mattress, and you usually have to turn it a couple times, because the elastic is all stretched out and disintegrating (from all that machine washing after the pee), and you cannot get that sucker on there on the first try.  You have to get up on that bed and turn it, around and around, and then, it finally goes on – miraculously, and then one edge pops up, and you are all like, “AHAkekdhfaldihahehehehhekkkiiiiiis!”  And, you have to go get a kid out of a tree, and so you come back later to finish this work.

Okay.  SO.  In MY world, once all four corners of elastic are somehow inexplicably wrapped around the corners of the mattress…you are now DONE.  Back away slowly.  The bed is made.  Get out of there.  Come nighttime, throw a blanket on them…throw a sleeping bag at em.  Walk away.

However, in my husband’s world, you are far from done after you get that bottom sheet on.  You have to go to the linen closet, and you unfold a - what they call in the old country – a “top sheet.”

THIS is another sheet that you put ON TOP OF the already-covered mattress.  It is supposed to MATCH the bottom sheet.  It is supposed to stay on the bed, and then you put a blanket or TWO on top of all that.  It is like a delightful tower of blankets. And you fold down different parts of it, and it stays that way. 

RAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

Way back when, a couple kids ago, I was willing to try this.  I was all like, “Sure…top sheet.”  Husband showed me how.  He stood there, and piled on all these sheets and blankets and pillows, and he smoothed it all out with the inside of his arm.  It was all flat and even and level and smooth.  He got the corners all nice and tucked down, and then he wanted to gamble on top of it or do some magic trick with a quarter, and I was all like, “This is no time for games, bud.”

It wasn't long after that (well, it was a couple kids later…so, like I said, not long after that), when I began to notice that – a short time after making beds – the top sheet and the blankets would be UNDER each bed, and sometimes… sometimes… they’d be missing altogether.  I was all like, “THAT THAT THAT just took me ten minutes to DO!”  I’d pull the top sheet from under the bed, and I’d put it back on – same way – ten minutes of tucking and smoothing. 

On those days when the top sheet went missing altogether, I’d go hunt it down, and I would find it somewhere in the neighborhood.  It would be part of an intricately detailed tea party canopy event or at the base of a mammoth fort under heavy artillery fire.  The bed’s blankets would be in those locations, too. 

I’d shake my finger.  Take back the bedding.  Ten more minutes – smoothing and tucking…smoothing and tucking - bed restored to its unspoiled old country grandeur. 

Well.  I am a quick learner.  I came to realize that with “some kids,” you just cannot keep a top sheet on a bed.  And, I have some kids. 

In fact, after extensive qualitative research, I can tell you that there are certain things a young human aims to do each day.  And - taking apart an already made bed is high on their daily to-do list.  They – the young humans - see a made bed as an offering you have kindly presented to them, to make their task uncomplicated, when they go looking for the materials necessary to fashion a variety of habitats. 

Furthermore, children take apart a bed in the night.  This proves that even when sleeping, children are messing with you.  Kids sleep like they are on fire.  They kick and flick blankets off of them like they are being tasered.  The entire bed is dismantled.  Sometimes, they wake up in the closet.  I mean.  Why bother.

But, Husband likes the top sheet.  He thinks a top sheet indicates class.  And since – we members of my Husband’s fantasy are - in said fantasy - so marvelously refined - we have top sheets…in the fantasy.    The morning-of-dad-coming-home, we bust out the top sheets.  It makes my kids laugh uproariously.  Really.  We really cut up over the top sheet going on the bed.

My husband spends THE ENTIRE week he is home putting the top sheets back on the bed because I will top sheet hunt No Mo.  There is endless “Top Sheet” banter.  There are questions of faith, and they are tied to the Top Sheet.  It – the top sheet - makes him begin to question his very nature…his purpose.  What is it all about.    

The horror my husband experiences when he walks in from a hitch to find a bed topsheetless cannot be expressed effectively, so we do all in our power to never let that happen…again…cause last week was ugly. 

OK, so – in short – because this was anything but short: 

Don’t rob your husband of his fantasy. 

Let the Tooth Fairy live:  put a top sheet on your kid’s bed before your husband comes home from work.  It’s not like it is going to STAY there or anything.  You’ll thank me later.  Marriage is forever.