Why Fitted Sheets are the Bane of My Existence (and should be outlawed entirely and swiftly)

     Today was a Tuesday like any other. I woke up at 6:45, 6:50, 6:55, 7:00, and 7:05; dragged myself to that ungodly hot shower (see "7 Simple Joys From the First Day of College"); went to my 8 AM Sociology class to watch my peers sleep and listen to them asking irrelevant questions; ate a lazy breakfast in my room; and then prepared to do my laundry. Laundry is always a pleasant part of the day for me. The laundry room is usually empty and provides a nice escape from social interaction, the smells of detergent and fabric softener and dryer sheets are soothing and pleasant, and I have an hour and a half block of time where I can force myself to sit, focus, and get some work done. Today as I descended into the laundry room, only one machine was open. I required two as I had neglected laundry for some time. I did not foresee a problem however, because the other three machines were all off and just waiting for someone to come empty them. I started a load in the empty machine and sat down to wait. Surely someone would be down in the next half hour to empty their machine.
     But it was not to be. So I settled for spending twice as long on laundry as I had originally wanted to (the price I pay for putting it off, I figure). After a lunch break, I return to gather my clothes from the dryer and begin the real task of the day, the one I've been putting off for as long as I felt I could: the washing of my sheets. I admit, I have no idea how frequently normal people wash sheets, but it isn't an activity I care for. Today, not having a lot of activities to do and in great need of dedicated study time, I decided to go for it.
     I started by stripping the bed (easier said than done when you have as many pillows and other things on your bed as I do). Still, the covers came off easily enough and I began to think, "Hey, maybe I can do domestic things." Then I got to the sheets, and everything changed. The flat sheet came up easily enough at the top, but the bottom seemed to extend interminably back underneath the mattress. I tugged and twisted and pleaded with them and finally managed to extricate them from the boards. I feel like I should mention at this point that my bed at college is a loft bed, so all of these activities must out of necessity take place while I am actually laying, kneeling, crouching, balancing on one toe on, or otherwise occupying my bed and the three feet of space between my mattress and ceiling.
     After the flat sheet was added to the pile on the floor it was time to face my arch nemesis: the fitted sheet. Our rivalry is not a new one. For nearly two years of my childhood I slept with absolutely no sheets on my bed out of disdain for their very existence. What purpose did they serve? I could just as easily sleep on top of my comforter, which was easy to lay over the bed and tuck into the side, and cover myself with a separate blanket.
     But I digress. Sheets are a social norm and I've come to accept and love them. I only wish they would accept and love me in return. I whispered this to them as I lay across my bed, spread-eagled, preparing to get to work. Delicately, I pinched a corner of the sheet between my pointer finger and thumb and pulled up. Nothing happened. I grasped the corner more firmly with my whole hand and pulled up. The whole mattress lifted but the sheet did not come free. I used my other hand to force the mattress down while wrenching the sheet upward. It came free and I punched myself in the face. One corner down, four to go. The rest are easier after the first, requiring only a mild struggle-and-tug dance on my part. The fitted sheet is free and I have conquered the beast!; or so I thought, but there sitting on the bare mattress, mocking me with their foldedness and readiness and cleanness, was the second set of sheets I had to put back on my bed. I wanted to do this before I left so that my room was in some semblance of order should visitors come knocking, but I was also in a race against time so as to avoid being the aforementioned person who leaves her clothes in the dryer forever with no explanation so that everyone else's laundry schedule is ruined.
     The frustrating thing about sheets is that putting them back on is even more work than taking them off, which is why I wonder why we must bother with this exercise at all. However, after twenty minutes of endless searching to find the short end of the fitted sheet (I swear they're actually circles) a good ten minute effort to get the first corner on (involving balancing very delicately on the edge of my bed frame, some significant abuse of the window blinds by my backside, and very nearly crashing through the window itself), and some fifteen minutes of effort to place the last corner (involving a miraculous act of balancing on my toes on the ladder slats of my bed while applying the full force of my body weight to haul the sheet into place), I am proud to say that the bed is made, the dirty sheets are in the washing machine, and I have taken advantage of this nice chunk of study time to relax in the laundry smells and update my blog for the first time in three weeks.
     But really, I could've found the motivation to update my blog while I was washing my clothes. So there's no practical reason to continue using sheets at all, really.

UPDATE: Have you ever tried to fold a fitted sheet? Impossible. Just another strike against them.

I'm a Bee Student

     At the end of my first week of college, I already have a pretty extensive list of ways I've experienced class being disrupted. So far, I've heard catcalls outside the window, car alarms going off, cell phones ringing, and even the construction of a whole new building (including loud working music, whistling, chainsaws, jackhammers, and the like) going on fifteen feet from the open window of my biology classroom. I've also heard from some fellow students that they had to actually evacuate their classroom for a fire alarm that no one else in the building could hear.
     By and large though, the most distracting thing I've experienced to date in a college classroom took place during my first biology lab the other day. We're sitting on squeaky, spinning stools surrounded by sharp pointy tools, cutting tools, 3D models of a human being's insides, little living creatures swimming in jars, big dead creatures floating in jars, and a multitude of different knobs, buttons, and levers to investigate. We are handling these things surprisingly maturely, all looking forward and listening to the professor explain the syllabus. And then we here the buzzing.
     Flying overhead, darting about with no regard to the people trying to learn below it, an enormous hornet investigates our ceiling lights. And I do mean enormous. I could clearly see the different segments of its body even from across the room. I'm guessing everyone else could as well, because I could see that every eye in the room was dedicated to following this bee. No one was listening to the professor anymore. The collective train of though went something like, "Okay, don't clean microscope lenses with -- Oh my God, is that actually a bee? Where is the bee now? Is it going to sting me? Can I react quickly enough to kill it if it came near? What if it stung the professor, that might be funny. Unless he's allergic...oh, no, where did it go?" Even the professor couldn't help but keep tabs on the insect as it resisted our every attempt to free it by opening windows and continued to try to find an escape route through the lighting.
     The only living object in the room that seems to be unaware of the bee's disrupting presence is the bee itself (and of course the paramecium). What's irritating to me is that the bee doesn't have to care. It has a singular power over every person in the room because of its innate ability to inflict more pain on us than we perceive being able to inflict on it. I mean, with a well-placed swat we could take that creature's life; but instead we all cower under our desks, praying it doesn't land on us unnoticed and decide to attack. And then we could take its life in revenge.
     So I guess the real question is, why do bees get to have stingers? Has anyone ever stopped killing a bee because it stung them? I don't think so. It seems like an unnecessary irritation.
     I don't really know where I was going with this, but it's uncomfortably hot and I have nothing better to do with this day so screw it, I'm publishing it. Ha.