PILLOW TALK

It is hard to believe I must be the only person on this planet that has been having an ongoing battle between pillows and pillowcases. I am on my third pillow in a nightmare that has finally been resolved and I am sleeping ever so peacefully,– except for the snoring. Some time ago I went shopping for a new pillow. I do not like pillows that are puffed up like huge auto air bags. My first attempt was a perfectly lovely pillow that felt just wonderful in the store. I was sure it would take me off to dreamland in no time. Alas, starting with that first night and continuing until I could not stand it any longer, it was horrible. I ended up with a stiff neck and slept with a small blanket folded into a pillow until I could get to the store and find another one. Pillow number two was even better than the first. I talked with a sales person and my description of what I needed was fulfilled beyond my dreams. Home I went, assured that my sleep would be sublime now. Wrong! The same thing happened. I was sure I was starting to get curvature of the spine. What could be wrong when just hours ago I was so happy. My husband dismissed the whole thing and thought it was my advancing age. He blames everything on that now. He was having no problems with his new pillow. One that was exactly like mine. What was I going to do? It was time to put on the old thinking cap and try to figure out what was going on here. I sat on the bed and looked at the pillows. Right away I saw one difference. His was nice and flat like I wanted mine to be, but mine was the size of an airbag. How could two people with the same pillows have two that now looked so different? Well in a nutshell this is what I discovered. Pillowcases are all the same size – in circumference and their length depends on whether you have a standard, queen, or king. I went to my computer and spent hours looking at pillows and pillowcases. All cases are 20 inches and their length depends on whether you have a standard or king pillow. However, there are a million different pillows. Pillows for back sleepers, side sleepers, and stomach sleepers. There are pillows of foam, of feathers, of puffy stuff, and combinations. You name it. To pick a pillow you choose from column A and column B. Off I went with a measuring tape. Ah ha! The plot narrows. No matter what they tell you, they are not telling you the whole story. Standard cases may be standard but they do not fit all standard pillows. Well, not exactly. You can stuff just about any pillow into a pillowcase but it doesn't mean that it will be the same once it i’s in the case. Its whole personality changes. No longer will it behave as it did in the store when you tried it out. It becomes confined...trussed like the Thanksgiving turkey. The other side of the coin is when you get around to washing the pillowcase, it will no longer be the size it was when it was new. I came home and measured pillowcases. I even went back and measured cases from years ago. None of them were 20 inches. Even the commercial cases I bought were not 20 inches. It is no wonder my pillows took on a different life when they became part of our bed. Back to the Internet. Site after site of pillowcases were all the same size. Claims of standard cases fitting standard pillows abound. But this is not the real world. An e-mail to my wonderful sister-in-law came back that she never buys cases. She makes them out of old sheets. Sure enough, there are simple instructions on the Internet for making your own cases. However, they too are sized just as the commercial ones are -– 20 inches. The only thing you gain is if you use pre-shrunk material. But the other advantage is that you can make them to actually fit your pillow so that the pillow performs as it was meant to be. I did not have any extra sheets to convert. Solution: I shopped the Internet until I found the exact pillow I wanted. I fell in love with it and salivated at the thought of it cradling my head night after night. I immediately ordered it. And while I was waiting for its arrival, I found a wonderful place in Florida that makes pillowcases of European size. Yes, a case that actually would fit my pillow with room to spare and size to shrink-– which it did on the first washing. But the pillow lays peacefully in the case and awaits my head each night. Oh what bliss. It i’s wonderful. The pillow is nice and flat and just the right thickness. It even has a small “pillow top ” like our mattress that is lightly quilted. My neck is back to its normal position. During the night I find myself scrunching it up just like a dog scratching its bed into comfort. Yes, the case did shrink a bit, but it was the length not the width and it still works. My nights are again peaceful and I drift off to sleep knowing I will wake well rested and not angry at the world of pillowcases. As I drift off I can no’t help wondering why I am the only person on the planet that had such a perplexing problem. But that can wait for another time because I don no’t really care.

And why is my husband happy with his? Well, I looked at him during the night. He sleeps on the whole darn thing and flattens it flatter than a pancake. Somehow it works for him. Now if I could only resolve the snoring.