Apparently, in the military, it’s a thin line between between petty inconvenience and aggravated assault.
Not really. Short-sheeting is a prank. A blanket party is a corrective measure, not to be used lightly.
Perhaps a gross generalisation, American TV content of this period also avoided anything controversial, ‘adult’, complex or challenging, in search of the ratings middle ground. As a result, watching it now, it all feels like it was written by and for 10 year olds or Ned Flanders, esp comparing it to other nations’ entertainment. Puerile pranks like short-sheeting fit within the band of acceptable behaviour that could be deployed as ‘plot’. It was maybe funny in real life watching a victim get caught and have to entirely strip and remake their bed late at night, but its not actually gripping television.
To be honest, the episode didn’t actually show the shortsheeting. Mallory just mentioned it off-handedly to Reed.
It was at a camp for troubled kids, so make of that what you will.
Personally, the kids could’ve made more of an impression by acting like my cats do and vomit on the bed if they really wanted to piss Pete off.
Some guys in my company did it to a kid from Texas, last name was Cram (yes, really). He was what was called a “scrounge” in the Navy and kept failing inspections that we all were punished for. He was banged up some after the blanket party, and I think tried to square himself away.
So have I been getting into bed the wrong way all of my life? Does everyone else crawl into the top of their bed like a zipped sleeping bag? Because when I get into bed, I lift the covers from the side first. The idea of “short sheeting” is kind of difficult for me because what you are describing would never happen to me.
I do exactly the same thing……when I’m at home I sleep on top of the comforter, wrapped in my favorite fleece blanket. It great for temperature control, just loosen or tighten the blanket.
As for short sheeting, it was a thing in my freshman college dorm for a couple of months.…..if you went out while your roommate was home alone you might get short sheeted, but it was all in fun.
If it was actually ever demonstrated in a television show, I think a lot more of us would know what it actually means. It’s like panty raids mentioned everywhere from Happy Days to That 70s Show. Often mentioned but never actually depicted. It’s almost like the writers didn’t even know the specifics.
Mining the depths of my memory bank for something I hadn’t thought about in years: As a teenager on the debate team, us girls managed to finagle the front desk clerk at the place where we were staying for the key to the boys’ room, and we short-sheeted their beds and took all their toilet paper. That’s the only time I’ve ever short-sheeted a bed, and when you’re 16 years old, that kind of thing is going to be quite funny.
We pulled the bedspread and top sheets off the bed, folded the top sheet in half, and replaced the covers. They also knew immediately who had done it.
A decade later, I worked with a woman whose previous job was as a front desk clerk, and she was under strict orders to NEVER give a key to anyone other than the room holders, but we were minors, so who knows. She did say that the craziest thing she ever experienced was during a high school sports tournament, and a boy agreed to strip naked and get folded up in a rollaway bed, thinking that his friends would take it down the hall to the cheerleaders’ room and sproing it open. Instead, they took it to the crowded lobby and sproinged it open there. We laughed when she told us about it, but really, that’s not very funny either.
I heard of “blanket parties” being a thing in women’s prisons, and unlike short-sheeting a bed, it was NOT done as a prank, and usually led to the blanketed person being seriously injured, or worse.
I grew up knowing what it meant to short sheet a bed, and maybe did it or had it done to me. But what is a blanket party?
A blanket party is where a bunch of people grab the blanket and hold it down so that the victim is trapped on the bed. The others involved then beat the snot out of the victim, typically with bars of soap in socks. Frats used to do it for hazing rituals, and it used to be common in the military as a way for soldiers to punish one of their members for poor performance or constantly causing trouble.
In prison it can get more violent, with metal objects or rocks used instead of soap. It’s often used as revenge against snitches. The blanket is also thrown over the victim such that their face is covered, making it impossible for the victim to identify their attackers.
As mentioned above, there is a very well-known scene in the movie Full Metal Jacket where an underperforming soldier is given a blanket party.
In the UK, it’s called an “apple pie bed”.
I assume you are well beyond the age of “early teens”. Short-sheeting the bed is a hilarious joke to a 13yr old.
I lift them partly from the side, at the top, but not all the way down the bed.
When I was a child, we were taught to tuck the sides in when making the bed. You weren’t generally going to unmake the whole bed in order to get into it.
These days it’s mostly a matter of maneuvering around several cats; but I still wind up getting into the bed from the top, just turning the covers down partially.
Those in this thread who don’t sleep between sheets at all, but wrapped directly in a blanket or comforter — do you wash that as often as the rest of us wash sheets?
Yes it is.
Indeed, but I assume it’s effectively died out here since duvets came in in the 60s/70s. But I’m no expert in institutional (let alone military) bedding. I’ll have to ask my great-nephew who’s just joined up in some junior training unit.
Like so many "pranks’ or “practical jokes” it can seem like part of, or a precursor to, outright bullying.
Back when I was a kid (1970s) this was a common wedding prank to a newlywed couple. Along with strings of soup/beer cans tied to the car bumper and “Just Married” written in white shoe polish on the widows, while they were on their honeymoon a few of their friends would “break” into their house, somebody would have, or get a key.
In the house, in addition to the sheets, they would take the labels off of soup/vegetable cans, put rice in the light fixtures, turn the hot water valve off, pull the drawers out of the dresser, flip the dresser over and put the drawers back in, and flip it back over, put a couple of squirts of motor oil in the gas tank of the lawn mower so it would smoke like a SOB the next time it was used. I am sure I probably have forgotten some of the other pranks.
With friends like that…
Yes, it is a gross generalization. Even looking at Adam-12, the mentioned source for the short sheeting episode, the show dealt with murder, rape, racism, gang violence, black activism (like Black Panthers, and those that would call to violence against cops), child molestation, abusive parents, wrongfully convicted people, and bad cops, to name a few.
They just had to be more circumspect in what words they used, or what they could show. For example. the rapist was called a “mauler”, like he only beat your face in, But they had the episode just the same.
Now, to be fair, anything by Jack Webb that dealt with hippies or counterculture was completely flanderized and clueless, to the point of hilarity. (“Sure my kid takes acid, It’s legal. It’s not like he’s smoking pot of something!”) And how they had their hippies dress, and the sitar music! Make it stop! But they did try.