I Changed My Sheets. A True Story.

I won't say it's unusual that I changed my sheets.  I won't say it's frequent, either.  But the following account is noteworthy.  I bought a very pretty set of sheets on clearance at Fred Meyer.  Dark purple and satiny.  I once bought a set of navy blue flannel-like sheets on clearance at Fred Meyer, which turned my skin blue every time I slept on them.  You should have been a fly on the wall of my brain, before I figured out it was the sheets.  I thought I was turning blue.  Once I figured it out, I got rid of those sheets.  Anyhow, I'm a skeptic about sheets I buy at Fred Meyer on clearance, but their prices are so good.  So I washed my new sheets, got my bed all unmade, and started making the bed with my new dark purple satiny sheets.  The fitted sheet was so deep, that it fit around not only the mattress, but the box spring too.  I decided that since it did fit around the box spring, it needed to fit around the box spring.  Now my mattress and box spring are encased together in this fitted sheet, and I throw the flat sheet on top.  I can't tuck in the flat sheet, because I've got the fitted sheet around the mattress and box spring together, and there's no space to tuck the flat sheet into.  Now I have a dilemma.  Obviously, these sheets are defective, because you can't tuck the flat sheet in.  I consider taking them back to Fred Meyer immediately, informing them their sheets are defective, and requesting a refund or exchange for a non-defective set.  But, I already did all this work.  I don't change my sheets so often that it's no big deal to stop in the middle and start over.  I probably should, but I definitely do not.  The alternative is to keep making the bed, but don't tuck in the flat sheet, because I can't.  I also can't tuck in the blanket or quilt.  And I know for a fact this satiny fabric is not going to magically stay in place without tucking in.  I will be lucky if it doesn't randomly slide off during the day, and I know it will slide off every night.  No question.  But I got this far, and decide to finish the job, pillows and all, and cross that bridge when I come to it.  Which I know will be every day that I wake up, at the least.  So I go on with my day, doing things, for several hours.  Several, as in three or four, hours.  In the back of my mind, I'm pretty annoyed that I have bought another set of bad sheets at Fred Meyer.  They're so cheap, it's almost not worth it to return them.  But if I could get another set that didn't have this problem, then I would really like them.  And it's the principle.  They can't keep selling me defective sheets.  Just because they're on clearance, doesn't mean they can not work as sheets are intended.  But I already made the bed, and I don't want to unmake it.  And I won't want to return them after I actually used them.  I'll have to re-remake my bed.  But it won't be that hard, since nothing is tucked in.  And I'm not actually going to sleep on sheets that are going to slide off in the middle of the night, taking my blanket and quilt with them.  Hours of stewing on the back-burner of my brain.


Then it hit me.  Just because the fitted sheet did fit around the mattress and box spring together, doesn't mean it has to.  It could possibly tuck in between the mattress and the box spring, like every other fitted sheet I have ever used in my life.  In fact, it probably does.  Oh yes, it definitely does.  Cue actual hysterical laughter.  I am frequently wrong, but not always in such a funny way.  And there's a moral to this story, too.  One of my favorite quotes ever, but in my head, it's singular which I think is much more catchy and gangsta.  

The other unusual element to this story, is that I have told it entirely without exclamation points.  Italics have been used liberally for emphasis.  And when I say emphasis in my head, I put the stress on the second syllable, so the "pha" sounds like the "fa" in "faster".  And when I say syllable in my head, I put the emphasis on the second syllable, which makes it sound like the "lob" in "lobster".  I probably got that from a movie.


P.S.  The only thing that stopped me from sharing my embarrassing but hysterical stupidity with the lovely clerks at Customer Service in Fred Meyer, is my unfathomable depths of laziness.  That's all.  I wonder if they would have laughed.  I wonder if I would have.  I cried, I was laughing so hard at home when it happened, and again when I told my mom, and again when I told my dad.  I probably couldn't have driven home, I'd be laughing and crying so hard.