I suppose that I should confess that I did have a personal experience with the dangers inherent in unmade beds, a tale so harrowing that it almost, almost convinced me to actually start tidying my bed up regularly.
It was five years ago or so, when I was living in Tucson, but had some good friends living down in Bisbee. Every weekend, I’d wander down there, and crash at their place, and go horseback riding on Sundays.
I stayed in a little room in their basement, complete with a single bed. And I never made the bed.
Well, in Bisbee, things are a little wilder than in the rest of cosmopolitan Arizona. If someone from the east coast asks us Tucsonans how we deal with snakes, and spiders, and scorpions, we just laugh derisively. Those things aren’t really all that common around here, we say. You’ve been watching too many westerns.
So, I arrive in Bisbee one weekend, and spend some time hanging around with my friends, enjoying their company and getting inebriated. And about, one in the morning, I went to bed. To that unmade bed in the basement room.
I took off my clothes, got into bed, snuggled down, and sat bolt upright. I had experienced a sharp, jabbing pain in my right foot, then another, then another, and the pain was just getting worse.
I jumped out of bed, and threw the covers back. And there, nestled down at the end of my unmade bed, was an eensy little scorpion, claws up, tail poised, making “You want a piece of me?” gestures.
I grabbed a nearby heavy object, and ended the insect’s existence messily. Then put on some clothes, and went upstairs to find out if I was going to die.
Apparently, at some time during this ordeal, I’d let out a demure little bloodcurdling yowl, because my hosts were up. I explained the situation to them, and they laughed at me a while, and said it would wear off in a few days. I mentioned that it was excruciatingly painful, and fortunately they had a solution on hand for that. Several hours of inebriation later, I went to sleep on the couch.
I had an interesting limp for several days, but did manage to go riding the next morning.
All of which goes to prove two things:
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I’ll go to bed with anything.
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I should make my bed.
…but I won’t.