Deep Pockets

I believe that I may have the world's highest bed.

We purchased a new box spring and mattress a few years ago, after the fifteen-year-old set we were sleeping on started to look like a dromedary camel (which, I am happy to tell you, is a large, even-toed ungulate. Not only is that a really cool factoid, it has provided me with some new ammunition in the war of words with my son, to whit: "Bring down your laundry, you large, even-toed ungulate!" Calling him a three-toed sloth had kind of lost its punch.)

The dromedaries, of course, are the one-humped camels. I can't even begin to speculate what would cause a mattress to look like a two-humped (bactrian) camel.

But I digress.

The hump in the middle of the mattress (which was so high that I could barely see Norm on the other side) was no doubt due to the fact that we never, ever turned the mattress every year the way you are supposed to. Just like we don't change our oil until the oil light comes on and we don't start Christmas shopping until, suddenly, one day it is December 20.

Perspicacity is not our middle name.

So, we had the lumpen mattress. We mattress-shopped at one of the many obliging mattress-giant-warehouses in the area, and test-drove a few models. Our criteria for selecting a mattress were simple: the mattress could not make our backs hurt any more than they already did, and ideally should make us hurt less.

We tried out the Tempur-Pedic mattress, but I somehow could not come to a full and complete stop when rolling over on this technological marvel. Plus it was eerily sharp-cornered.

We settled on a plush, plump, pillowtopped thing that stands roughly 5 feet off of the ground. We signed the paperwork and left the store eagerly anticipating the arrival of our new sleep system.

When the mattress was delivered and placed on our bed, the sleigh headboard that had dominated the room was barely visible. This, clearly, was a mattress that even the pea-averse Princess of farytale lore could sleep on.

After clambering (with some difficulty and the help of a few Sherpas) up onto the top of Mount Ever-Rest and reveling for a moment in the pillowy softness, I went to the linen closet and got out a set of sheets.

Which, it turned out, fit the bed like a bad toupee.

The fitted sheet barely came down over the pillow top, much less reaching down to the bottom of the mattress.

This is when I became aware that fitted sheets are in fact three-dimensional objects, the additional dimension being depth. The depth of the average fitted sheet that we owned (about ten years old) was nine inches.

The mattress was eighteen inches thick.

During the night these paltry sheets sometimes would come off of the mattress entirely. Oh, the unbearable horror of the naked mattress.

Thus began my tireless quest for that rara avis of the linen world, the deep-pocketed fitted Queen-sized sheet.

I have trekked through the linen departments of many and many a store; sometimes I would actually find a sheet that advertised itself as deep-pocketed, but usually the pocket was a paltry fifteen or sixteen inches.

I became tireless, an Ahab in search of the White Whale of the eighteen-inch pocket. Shoppers would see me lurking in the linen aisle, muttering "Only fifteen inches! What, are they crazy?"and give me a wide berth.

Doesn't anyone else care about this issue?

Until, one happy day in Target, I found my white whale, the Moby Dick of bedmaking: the Queen-Size Extra-Deep Twenty-Inch Pocket Sheet, in a lovely shade of aqua. It completely covered the mattress, with room to spare. And, it was reasonably priced.

No more does my mattress look like a strumpet in a too-skimpy skirt.

Of course, I only bought one set, because that is all that Target had, and have been washing them and putting them right back on the bed. So, it is time to buy another set.

It is January, and the white sales are on. The stores beckon. I must go.

Why, you ask?

Because they are there.