First there was the bare ground. Then a sprinkling of pine needles, leaves and grasses was added. Next came a sack filled with straw followed by a better idea: bird feathers. Moving right along,  a lowly shepherd one day looked at his fleecy flock and thought how lovely it would feel to have one of those critters under him. In time we progressed to coiled springs, foam rubber and even water. Now we can actually dial up our mattresses to get the perfect number for our particular body’s inclines and declines. Imagine such a thing! And what exactly, I speculate, would the number be that would accommodate my hips?

The pillow came next. Neanderthals used rocks, movie cowboys used their saddles, and we used our barnyard duck and chicken feathers. Now Mr. “My Pillow” has come along. (Makes me wonder if his first name is “My.”) He guarantees that his gently shredded foam chunks are the answer to all our sleeping woes, but does anyone know for certain if they’re really better than the original rocks, saddles and aviary down, although it would seem that by now we’re savvy enough to eliminate the rocks.

The innovative Japanese sleep on a pillow made from buckwheat husks. I do, too. It’s wonderful. With a simple poke of my finger I can mold it into the perfect shape of my head — and it maintains that formation until I poke it into the next comforting shape. The only downside is that crispy buckwheat husks are unnervingly noisy. With my ears lying directly on top of them, the shuffling of the husks is exactly the noise that car tires make when they drive over a concrete driveway covered in acorns. But, make no mistake, the racket instantly disappears once all my head’s bumps and dents are form-fitted to this marvel, whereupon sleep comes rapidly and deeply. We have buckwheat in America.  Why didn’t we think of that? We could have named it “Our Pillow!”

Have you checked out the thickness of the new mattresses? They make “The Princess and The Pea” look like the real deal. Anymore it’s normal to buy sheets that fit a 16-inch-plus mattress. And to climb up onto these lofty beds, you need either a step ladder or Ichabod Crane’s legs. But quite honestly, today’s sheets are a splendor. No ironing, and wouldn’t you agree that the fitted bottom sheet is right up there with the invention of the wheel?

Some months ago I hired a young bachelor to help me set up a new bedroom. He stood there gobsmacked over all that this entailed:  the bed frame, the box springs, the bed skirt, the mattress, a half inch foam topper, the mattress pad, the fitted bottom sheet, the top sheet, the electric blanket, a second blanket in case electricity wasn’t enough, a bedspread, four pillows with cases that matched the sheets, two more pillows called “shams” that coordinated with the bedspread and hid the previous four pillows, followed by a great assortment of throw pillows of various sizes and designs. All this when he was happily content with an old scratchy army blanket thrown over a cot.

Decorator pillows are a mystery to men. First of all they cannot fathom what their function is and secondly they are dismayed over why they must never EVER allow their heads to touch them! We girls, on the other hand, understand them to the depth of our souls. We don’t even mind the nuisance of removing them every evening and replacing them every morning, world without end, this convoluted act in some way feeding our feminine sensibilities.

Glen and I just returned from a three-week stay in a small town at the very most southern tip of the Mexican Baja peninsula. There we shared a bedroom which had only one bed.  It had been years since we’ve been confronted with such a predicament.  But, then, I said to myself, after all, didn’t we spend much of the last sixty connubial years together in one bedroom with one bed?

It took about fifteen minutes into the first night for me to realize there was not enough jalapeno-laced guacamole in the southern hemisphere for me to be completely knocked senseless to the noise that erupted beside me.  Lying there in shock, I thought a metal fabricating shop had moved into the bedroom!

Honestly now, when I see photos in the Herald of couples celebrating their 50th and 60th anniversaries, I have to wonder if they’re still cuddling in a single bed like the photos suggest. I say no way!  They couldn’t possibly be married 50 or 60 years if they were. The only explanation for such an extraordinary thing is if none of those husbands has adenoids, tonsils and noses, which begs the question of what an autopsy would show is in there. Like who knew that men have teeny tiny jack hammers inside their throats that only rev up while in a prone position?

Remember the Puritan bundling board?  That was where a courting couple was partitioned off with a board down the middle of the bed disallowing any funny business before they were married.  I’ll bet you anything that once one of those wise virginal maidens experienced the thunderous explosions coming from the other side of that board, she nailed a drywall panel to it that went clear up to the ceiling.  The second bedroom was born!

I love second bedrooms.  I believe they were invented by God for the survival of wives. It’s not that we don’t love our spouses.  We adore them.  We simply want to adore them from a soundproof distance.  It’s like our jobs.  We like and even love them, but we don’t want to sleep with them.  Furthermore, I believe that if sleep apnea were eradicated, there would be no more wars.

In conclusion, I’m convinced that if Adam and Eve had figured out this second bedroom thing, a sleep deprived Eve would have never turned to that apple for a way out.