If you haven't purchased and slept on high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets you haven't really slept. Sliding into bed and letting all of the days worries and stress go away is sometimes the best part of my day. Like any halfway clean person I try to change them out each week and I rotate between four or five different sets. The interesting part about high thread count sheets are that they wear quicker than your average two hundred thread count sheet sets.
You would think that a lower thread count sheet would equal shorter life span and poorer quality. The reality is that cheaper sheet sets with lower thread counts will survive the end of the world. Sliding into a bed with 200 thread count sheets feels like being sandwiched between sheets of sandpaper. Staying in a hotel is torture for me. My sensitive skin crawls from the cheap thread counts found in hotels. I can attest to the longevity by digging in my mothers closet. She still has some floral pattern sheets from the 70's. I swear these sheets play "I Will Survive" when spreading them out on a bed. By the way there is an ugliness factor involved. The uglier they are the longer they will live.
A couple nights ago I snuggled in for a good nights sleep on a set of five year old king size brown sheets that have eye pleasing brown stripes. It took me less than 10 minutes to drop off to la-la land. Lets just say my dreams quickly turned to nightmares. I broke my leg in a hole, Someone was grabbing my leg. My daughter wouldn't let go of my leg as I went away for an evening. Finally, someone broke into my house and they tried to tackle me and wouldn't let go of my leg, I tried to reach my phone to call for help.
Finally I woke up, sweat soaked, gasping for breath, comforter thrown to the floor. I was shivering from the fans blowing on me and I was so tangled I couldn't move my leg. I threw the sheets back trying to figure out what I had eaten the night before that would give such nightmares. I swung my feet to the floor. One leg went, the other didn't. My sleep addled brain processed this as throw back sheets harder and kick leg harder. Throw....kick,,,struggle...flounder....end up on floor.
How in the world did I end up on the floor? I cracked and popped all my joints as I tripped over shoes and laundry baskets. (See previous blog) Shedding some light on the subject revealed a leg sized hole in the fitted sheet. I had been struggling in my dreams against the sheet which had swallowed my leg and wouldn't let me go. It was ridiculous. I pulled the sheet off and that is when I realized that these sheets were so worn out you could see through them. The fitted sheet had become translucent with the wear and tear of the last five years. Falling out of bed and having weird dreams aren't always a bad thing. This could have been a real safety hazard. I could have poked my head through and strangled to death. Imagine the dreams from that? The counseling bills that would come about due to aged, disintegrating sheets? Do we have recalls on sheets? Have I bought the GM version of the fancy sheet world?
The next morning as I shotgunned a triple espresso. I considered an event from my adolescent years. (Enough perverts, we are concerned with the failure rate of sheets here!) April Fools having recently passed I thought I would share a short-sheeting story that turned into a not so fun sheet failure for my parents. My cousin Dena and I conspired to play pranks for April Fools. It was agreed that I would try the short sheet trick and Dena would do the old switch the sugar and salt trick.
Being a latchkey kid, my sister and I arrived home from school on the first. After turning on Duck Tales and getting her something to eat I snuck down to my parents room. My sister was a tattler at the time and wouldn't have been able to pass up the opportunity to score some brownie points with Mom by telling on me. I quickly and quietly folded the comforter, and sheets back with much running back and forth. I then folded the sheet from the foot of the bed up and tucked everything in nice and tight. I replaced the comforter and pillows with precision lines and quarter bouncing tightness. It took me 30 minutes.
In my defense, my parents should have known something was off. Mom can make a mean bed but it takes her a minute and while it looks good it isn't going to be the most perfect. As long as she gets her 30 or 40 throw pillows artistically arranged she is happy. After thirty minutes those pillows weren't artistic they were laid out with military precision and lacked all look of casualness that "throw" pillows demand.
Around ten that night I was sound asleep. There was a quiet laughter coming from Dad as he walked down the hall. I could hear my mother opening her squeaky linen closet. She was not happy. I could hear her stumping around like my Grandpa Sare would when he wasn't happy about something. As they were getting into bed I hear quiet murmuring. I drift off to sleep thinking my trick failed and they had changed sheets before getting into bed.
Later in the week we were visiting with my Aunt and Uncle when Uncle Curt began telling about Dena's attempt to prank him at breakfast, The failure of her attempt resulted in hilarity that she can add in the comments if she wants to admit to it. I was suddenly shocked when my mother looked at me and said "You know if I had known Josh could make a bed that well I would have docked his allowance all these years." She began to describe getting into bed. Sliding her legs down to the foot of the bed only to find a mysterious block to her relaxation. Rather than investigate she commented on how tightly made the bed was. She figured she needed to give the sheets a little kick to pull them free and get into bed.
"Rrrripppp" She kicked her foot right through the sheet. Her best sheets to hear her tell it. Everyone else was laughing and Mom went on to describe the scene and how Dad had stood by the bed laughing. I meanwhile was afraid I was about to get the butt blistering of a lifetime. I didn't mean to damage her sheets. Was my mom secretly a cyborg with hydraulically powered legs that she could kick through cloth like it was nothing? I apologized later and she let me off the hook explaining about how worn out the sheets had gotten. It gave her an excuse to go to JC Penney and bu a new set of stylishly flowered sandpaper sheets to put on her bed later in the week. I checked my bed for short sheeting for months afterwords. I was worried I would tear my Transformers sheets, A boy doesn't know fear until he lives with the looming threat of parental prank revenge.