Pythagoras in the Bedroom

Everyone knows that sharing a bed with someone is a simple matter of geometry.

Everyone, that is, except for my husband.

When I sleep, I lie with my head at the headboard and my feet at the footboard. If you were to draw a straight line through the two, that line would be perpendicular to the headboard and footboard. This doesn’t mean that I sleep like I’m a board; my knees crook, my arms extend from my body, and I relax. But, in general, the line of my body forms right angles with the headboard and footboard.

When Charles has full reign of the bed, however, he does not observe this tendency toward geometric simplicity. The line of his body becomes a diagonal, forming angles with the headboard that are NOT right. (If something’s not right, that means it’s wrong.) Not only is he not in line perpendicularly, but his arms splay out in all directions so that somehow, this one man inhabits all of the space in our king-sized bed.

This approach does not alter when we share the bed. My line is perpendicular; his is not. This means that our lines intersect, usually somewhere around the legs. Intersecting lines may look all sexy on a graph, but in practice, create complications in bed. Limbs have to accommodate other limbs, certain bony knees dig into unsuspecting thighs. A long-range plan of comfort and relaxation depends on the two sleepers being parallel lines. As stated in one of those geometric theorems from long ago, parallel lines do NOT intersect.

They can however, run alongside one another, on and on, forever. Parallel lines have staying power. And spooning power. Spoons nestle into each other; they don’t intersect. So, to spoon successfully, you have to remember not to intersect; otherwise, you’re just forks.