The Squire and I “spun” our mattress top to bottom this morning, something I try to do every six months.
My mother insisted that I do something to her mattress every week when I visited her at the retirement center. One week the mattress got spun, and the next week it got flipped. Modern mattresses are not made to be flipped, but my mother insisted I do so anyway, which left the underside exposed. I would have to lay every available blanket and quilt on the surface, and then top it with a lambs-wool pad, but it still must have been akin to sleeping on a railroad track.
Even when I was a child, this was weekly S.O.P., and one of the few things I ever heard my dad complain about. Making the bed was also a Big Deal. Both sheets were removed, and the bottom sheet set aside. The top sheet was turned head to toe and put back on the mattress as the bottom sheet. The original bottom sheet was now used as the top sheet.
This was done every morning. My mom did it for me when I was “little” but by the time I was in the first grade, I was doing it alone. Before I left for school in the morning.
It wasn’t until I started boarding school in the fourth grade that I learned not everybody in the world did this. I was delighted to make this discovery! I still turned my mattress every Saturday, but I could get away with “zipping up” the bed – at least until I went home for the summer.
After a particularly messy bed-making job (I was out of practice!) my mother made some crack about the fact that my sister’s bed always looked perfect. One look at Lynn’s face, and I bit my tongue.
She slept on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, which she folded across the foot of the bed in the morning. Her bed always looked perfect because she never used it!
Fink.
thisendoftheswamp 
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