One good turn...

By Jack Elliott
Contributor

One good turn … will take the whole blanket
One good turn will take the whole blanket. At least that’s what my friend Norm told me and my wife, the Pearl of the Orient has been consistently proving it over the last 42 years. This past winter week at the condo in Florida things came to a head.
For over forty years the Pearl and I have been sharing the same covers… except for the odd night on the sofa. It has been a successful, if uneasy partnership. The Pearl insists on a well made bed, hospital corners all neat, tidy and well tucked in. With my extensive frame, I grew up with my feet sticking out the bottom of the bed and simply can’t relax unless I can get them out the bottom. Even at moose camp I have to unzip the sleeping bag so I can air my tootsies in the fresh if sometimes frigid air.
Having the covers un-tucked also removes the remote chance (in my case the probability) of accidentally gassing oneself.
The truce broke into open warfare one night at the condo. The duvet and blankets there you see are slippery and on a few particularly nippy evenings lately the Pearl would by 2:00 am wind up with the bulk of- all- the covers. A few tosses and turns on her part and she would have herself wound up like a mummy. I simply nursed goose bumps and the tidbit of sheet I managed to claw back simply wasn’t doing the job. Sleep interrupted is not a good thing
In desperation, I gripped the edge of the bedding and spinning like a crocodile ripping apart a wildebeest wrapped myself in a couple of layers.
The Pearl’s cocoon unrolled propelling her across the bed until she bumped up against my corpse. Instead of the languorous smile that would have signaled such midnight rendezvous a few decades earlier, the sleepy-eyed utterance was, “What?”
“You took all the covers!” I complained now securely anchored to my share of the duvet.
“I did not! You threw all of them on my side of the bed because you were too hot,” came the angry retort of the Pearl now fully aroused (and I don’t mean in a good way).
A lively debate ensued accompanied by a good deal of tugging and pulling that ended with the bed in total disarray and the lady in the apartment below banging on the ceiling.
On succeeding evenings I made pre-emptive strikes by anchoring my feet wrapping them in the sheet, blanket and duvet. I also spread the extra blanket on my side as emergency backup.
By 1:30 I was roasting so I just tossed the covers over onto the Pearl. She might be chilly, I reasoned.