Pillows – rather insignificant sundry items that we tend to take for granted until you need a weapon for a pillow fight or you’re having a hard time getting a decent sleep.
I’m pretty particular as far as pillows go – I want a huge pillow that is in Goldilocks’ parlance, not too hard, not too soft, just right. Too soft and it feels like I’m being swallowed by a demented killer marsh mellow. Too hard and my ears and cheeks are squashed, and my hair is pressed clear through my skull, causing it to pop out the other side in a most bizarre and not at all attractive manner.
When my pillow is entirely to my liking I can mould it into the perfect supportive shape, punch it, roll it, smack it into that which suits my fancy.
When the pillow is uncooperative I am sentenced to a night of fitful sleep at best. I will arise from bed in the morning looking and feeling like a gargoyle and will in no way be little Miss Sunshine.
Pillows are why I do not like to travel. A hotel will never have a pillow that works fro me, friends and relatives pillows, despite their wonderful homey quality, will never be like that which I have at home. I should perhaps learn to stash a pillow in my luggage when I travel, but I’m usually so grateful to see my own wonderful pillow when I get home that I promptly forget the idea until I remember it in a delightfully perverse and ironic fit of clarity the next time I travel overnight.
I think that much of my pillow pickiness is a result of many years spent onboard a naval ship, an environment where the crew comes second to the ship and mission, and pillows place a distant last in the grand list of priorities.
As with many things in the military, one’s pillow as provided by the military was designed by a committee and built by the lowest builder. While the standard military issue pillow may look like a pillow, when new it could be used to support one side of a tank in the air and if soaked in kerosene would burn for weeks.
After a suitable period of breaking in, say three years, the pillow will now be so soft that it’s like sleeping on a bag of lukewarm Jello. Take the pillow out of the pillow case and it would flow away like a puddle of polyester, forming a pancake of pillow parts.
Last night was a good example of how a pillow can effect my sleep – I more or less didn’t and as a result I am now far from home, far from being in a good mood and I in no way resemble little Miss Sunshine.
Tonight I will bolt on a smile and shove toothpicks in my eye lids as pretty little me works the party, eagerly awaiting the moment where the agony of time reaches the point where I can go lay my head down.
Oh, how I hate pillows.
