I’m listening to Rubber Soul, and a thought crossed my mind…
Why is it in old movies and what not, that when there’s no extra bed to sleep in, the guest would sleep in the bath tub? Seems like a foolish place to try and sleep, I’d rather get a blanket and lie on the floor.
Yeah yeah yeah, we Americans, we listen to your music but we don’t know how to use your language. Get over it! 
Cause the floor was dangerous before…snakes, spiders, ‘visitors’ of the animal kind…and dirty and unfinished before the industrial revolution.
It carried over to movies, but it does not make sense to sleep in a bath tub in most houses of the 20th century. But early film makers were raised pre 20th century.
Having actually slept in the tub a few times, I’d like to say that the advantage lies partly in the extra quiet extracted from being in a seperate room, and partly in the assurance that the surface you’re trying to sleep on isn’t covered in corn-chips.
I can ceratinly understand not wnating to sleep with spiders, but - surely even in the early 20th century, a LOT of homes, or working-class ones anyway, would not hav aa bathtub or even any indoor lavatory facilities.
Still, I’ve no idea what the proportion of bathtub owwners to non-bathtub owners would be, so I might well be talking’typping rubbbish.
So, as you were, chaps!
If the tub is long enough and has the proper slope, it can be rather comfortable–so long as you don’t want to roll over. I occasionally fall asleep while taking a hot bath, but I wouldn’t want to spend eight hours in that position.
“I’d lie on the floor” is correct.
I have a friend who lives in steaming hot south Texas who regularly sleeps in his bathtub (with cool water in it). He doesn’t have an air conditioner in his house and that helps him cool down. In the comic College Roommates from Hell one of the characters also sleeps in the bathtub. You would have to read through the archives to find it though.
I slept in a tub once, but I was too drunk to make it back to bed.
So, I lit a fire. Isn’t it good?
Drink enough, and anywhere’s a good place to sleep.
Would a modern translation of the term “Norwegian wood” be “IKEA”?
[hijack]
This probably belongs in the misunderstood lyrics thread, except that I actually believe I’m talking about the “real” lyrics to “Norwegian Wood”: is there any validation for my theory that Lennon, wanting to describe sleeping around but impaired by having a wife who’d go nuts from hearing it, wrote a song with the words “knowing she would” (i.e., knowing this girl would sleep with him was enough for his male ego) and substituted the nonsense soundalike words “Norwegian Wood” to disguise it?
[end hijack]
[reply to hijack]
WTF are you talking about?
It’s your theory. You validate it.
The lyrics make perfect sense to me as they are.
[/reply to hijack]
They do? You understand what “norwegian wood” means? Please enlighten me. I thought norwegian wood was pretty much like Swedish wood or Babylonian wood, in that it would burn in a fire pretty much the same regardless of national origin, and would be kind of silly to emphasize my making it the title of a song. But maybe I’m just a little slow.
Norwegian wood = Scandinavian furniture. IKEA. Comprende?
Bath tubs are the natural place to sleep when one is a bit intoxicated.
And you don’t have to worry about making it to the toilet to puke.
One more vote here for the bathtub keeping you out of the way of things like mice, rats, and cockroaches, which in earlier eras were standard residents in many houses.
Plus it’s cleaner than making up a pallet on the floor. During the era of coal-burning stoves and home furnaces, even many nice middle-class homes could be “grimy” from soot, which was produced on a daily basis and which taxed the energy of the housewife to keep up with (hence the annual “spring cleaning”), and the floor was not considered a desirable location for sleeping.
Another reason would be that in the era before central heating and modern insulation around doors and windows, the floors could be darn drafty. Spend some winter time in an uninsulated turn-of-the-century farmhouse, and you’ll be dumbfounded at the way the cold air literally pours in around the window and door frames and flows across the floor.
But you’re sleeping in the bathtub, up away from the drafts, so you’re quite cozy.
Duck Duck Goose: This ain’t no poll here. Your vote don’t count. Please provide personal experience, a reference, an amusing anecdote, anything other than rationalisations.
Desmostylus, you didn’t start the thread and you’re not a mod. Quit trying to be a policeman.
The only time I’ve known someone to sleep in the bathtub was when my mum had a dinner-plate sized spider drop on her face in the night.
I was striving toward sarcasm, rather than policing. Sorry if I failed in that respect in you eyes.
Why did she think that the bath was safe? In my house, the only place that I’ve seen really enormous spiders is in the bathtub.
:eek:
[makes mental note never to move to Brisbane]
You’d be safe – this was in a small island in the South Pacific. All we get here are hand sized huntsmen spiders :).
And
Well it was around midnight and she’d just had her encounter with said spider so I don’t think she was thinking too logically.