When I was a small girl, I would cover my dolls up with blankets before bed. The dolls sat on the shelves next to my bed or on the shelf above my head. It was so so cold in my family�s house when I was growing up that the dollies' bodies felt like plastic ice cubes when I went to greet them hello in the morning. I dutifully knitted 10 to 12 small squares to cover their splayed legs. This is still the only kind of knitting I know how to do.
We had an ancient heating system that just didn�t really get any heat to the upstairs until about 15 minutes before we had to get up and go to school. We knew it was on because it groaned, sounding much like a monster losing its power as night turns into day. There were times I could see my breath.
I saw The Exorcist when I was around 14 or so, I think. I saw pieces of it through a web of my fingers. There was Linda Blair as Regan snorting out big breaths of steam because she was possessed and everyone knows Satan makes things very, very cold. Huh? I didn�t get that. I always heard it was steaming hot wherever, whenever the devil was around. Still, I worried that perhaps the devil was upstairs in our house just waiting to sneak in through my mouth or nose.
I took to lightly covering my face with the blankets. I also perfected my corpse pose while sleeping. This had a two-fold purpose. I was less likely to expose some orifice for devil-diving and the bed was so much easier to make in the morning. My mother required hospital corners on our beds. I was tucked in so tightly I think it helped my dancing classes as my feet were molded en pointe for eight hours or so. Foot problems, here we come!
I could take the worry train quite far. I was very influenced by films. After I saw Jaws when I was in the eighth grade, the predictable shark-fear in the ocean became supplanted by an off-the-wall worry that I could get bit by a shark in our pool. Our above-ground pool. I even practiced a flailing I�ve-been-bit-by-a-shark routine. This is available upon request.
Nowadays, I�ve got quite a menu of things to do before I sleep. They are either to somehow slow the aging process (a hysterical experiment) or just to sleep (I�m a long time valerian user, so long that the smell is pleasant to me now). One thing I do insist upon before even being able to get into bed is clean, lotioned feet. I can not stand dry feet on sheet. Worse is dirty, dry feet on sheet. Erk.
Yes, Beulah, I do recall those big bed cushions being called �husbands�. They are mostly referred to now as bed rests or something similar. This made me recall when my Dad would watch television in our den. He would lie on the floor and fashion himself headrests from pillows and other objects. For quite awhile, he used a cribbage board that was carved from a log as his base and then cover it with pillows.
We used to play a game called �log cabin� which is completely separate from the carved log object. The game started much earlier when my sister and I had bunk beds. On Saturday mornings we�d all pile into the bottom bunk, Dad included, and he would give us log cabin things to do. �Throw another log on the fire,� he�d say, or, �Please make me a cup of coffee.� Mostly log cabin was about being cozy. Cozy mozy as we all would say, and still do.