Playing to the fringes...

While I was sitting awake, my insomnia kicking in, trying to get back into my most recent Chuck Palahniuk book, Diary (so far, eh...), I noticed something. Something that even I recognize as odd about myself. And if you've been visiting here often, you know that odd is normal for me. But I digress. Okay, here it is: Even though I have a queen-sized bed, I sleep almost exclusively on one side, the right side.

I don't know why I do this. It's not as though I've ever truly share this bed with anyone. Sure, my alarm clock is on the side I sleep on, making it easier for me to smack the snooze button in the morning, but is that really a reason to abandon a full side of my bed? Have I neglected the left side of my bed? Is the reason for my insomnia some type of jealousy, where the left side of my bed has conspired with the right side to wake me in the middle of the night unless I share the love with the left? Is there some type of bed-related politics where my bed is telling me that my campaign for sleep has passed the primaries, and, after initially campaigning to the fringe, I now need to refocus on the center? Have I unfairly written off the left side, wrongly and hastily concluding that its tree-hugging ways would be less comfortable and familiar as the right? Am I a right-side snob, or worst yet, a left-side bigot?

The other strange thing I've realized is that, for some reason, I relinquish pillows to the unused side of my bed. Now, I'm a guy, so I don't have "decoration pillows," a phenomenon deserving of a post all on its own. No. I have four pillows on my bed and they are all what I will dub "utility pillows." In other words, each of these four pillows is useful for more than decorative purposes. Two are those funky bean pillows in sham cases, the type that mold to the head to give the neck constant support. The other two are full and soft cushy pillows, the kind that support the head and double as something to hug while sleeping (note the earlier reference to not actually sharing my bed...).

But strangely, two of these pillows, one bean sham and one white cushy, spend their time predominately unused, residing on the lonely left side of my bed. Occasionally, I'll grab one and bring it to the right side for the night. But, it feels like I'm just borrowing it, as though I were borrowing a yard tool from a neighbor, taking it temporarily from its left side home for a short job and then returning it, sometimes later than I should have. And in the morning, the first thing I do is return it to the left side and fluff it back to its original cushyness.

And there those two pillows sit. Either happily or lonely on the unused left side of my bed.

Maybe I should change my strategy. Maybe I should move more to the left. Maybe I will discover that I'm really a centrist sleeper and that my bed has been trying to tell me something all along.

Eh, screw it. I'm too tired to do anything different.