PILLOW TALK

JV: Welcome to ‘This is what I live with.’ What do you live with?

Maria: My husband has a funny thing about his sheets.

JV: Mm.

Maria: The pillow cases have to be open-inward. So he can’t sleep with the opening facing into the middle of the bed which is weird for me.

JV: Okay

Maria: He also cannot have the pillow case or the sheets wrinkled when he gets in the bed and he cannot put his face on a wrinkled pillow case.

JV: Gee an unwrinkled pillow case is hard to achieve.

Maria. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know.
(Both laugh)

Maria: He has to have it slapped with no wrinkles.

JV: Slapped pillow case. No wrinkles. Right. I mean I would tend to tighten up the sheets. Y’know, I don’t check for wrinkles but I’d certainly smooth it out a little and tighten it up. Are you saying the slightest wrinkle in the sheet and there’s an issue?

Maria: Yeah. On his part of the bed he has to tighten it up but also on the pillow case – the pillow case has to be flattened. Just perfectly flat. I don’t understand that at all.

JV: Yeah. I’d never worried about which way the opening of the pillow case faces.

Maria: Yeah that is... and it looks so wrong because I mean you go to any department store and you see when they do the beds...it’s so wrong to me but he can’t have it. He can’t have the openings facing outwards.

JV: Is he happy to do the arranging here or do you have to do it?

Maria: Oh he’ll do it. He’ll do it.

JV: So he’ll straighten his own thing out and get it sorted?

Maria: Yes, yes, yes.




JV: Now we met Maria before whose husband must have smooth sheets and must have the opening of the pillow slip on the inside of the bed.

Caroline: Well I’m wondering if her partner is the son of a nurse because nurses were trained to make the bed where the opening of the pillow is in the centre of the bed. So, if it’s a double bed, the opening’s are touching y’know what I mean?

JV: Ah! And why are nurses trained thus?

Caroline: I think it was so that, when people came in to visit the person in bed, that the neat end of the pillow is facing the door.

JV: Oh okay yes because I was just thinking that there’s not a lot of double beds in hospitals.

Caroline: No, no, no. It’s to do with the door.

JV: It faces away from the door because there’s something unseemly about the opening of the pillow slip.

Caroline: I’m the daughter of a nurse and I’ve always done the same thing and I’m wondering if that was the case for him.

JV: That’s interesting.

Caroline: Mm. Fascinating isn’t it.

JV: Well I think what we’re doing in this segment is we’re getting a faint sense of the deep family background.

Caroline: Absolutely.  Deep Psychological insights.