Pillow Talk

Sleep Expert Michelle Sullivan of Manchester’s Mattress Firm on South Willow Street says that pillow customers are divided 50-50 between men and women, but in an informal survey at the Angelo household, and I suspect at many others, pillow interest by sex is about 95 percent to about 5 percent. Women love pillows. Men couldn’t care less.

eBay lists 93,000 pillowcases under Home Décor and if you don’t know what thread count or waffle weave are then join my club.

Sullivan claims that purple is the hot color in designer pillows and that, sportsfans, is good enough for me.

Real pillows, as opposed to designer or fake pillows, differ in firmness and contour depending on whether one sleeps on the side, back or stomach. This is crucial to the one pillow I call mine. I’m a side sleeper for starters but with Restless Leg Syndrome I’ve been known to engage in various sports such as scooping the pillow to my body as if it was a Super Bowl fumble. Football firm. Pillow firm with, sadly, New York Jets memory foam. My pillowed memory draws a blank.

Designer pillows are the fake or throw pillows that decorate a sofa, commonly known as your basic couch, to men. I suspect they’re called throw pillows because of the way they’re stacked on the sofa but to men throw pillows are made for throwing, often at the television set when fumbles go awry.

Nothing kills throw pillow décor like plastic covers on the furniture. Such covers scream the upholstery is being saved for another day, a day when real guests are expected. Again, join my club.

Pillow shams are not fake pillows. They are the coverlets of pillows that can be easily slipped off. eBay lists 87,000 pillow shams in King, Queen or regular pillow case size. There’s that thread count thing to translate again. I’ve got better things to do with my time.

Memory foam feels like a  good thing. Pillows can be divided into firm, medium and soft. Memory foam remembers the contour of your noggin, much like it did with the dead mother in Psycho. Soft, or what I call mush pillows, only indent to the same drool spot every night. Memory foam means the pillow settles in quickly unlike the skull contours you had to memorize in Anthropology 101. There is no Ramapithicus memory foam.

Now, metelasse is the crème de la crème of designer pillows or pillow shams. This is what the French do when they’re not busy making French fries. The stitched designer pattern of the sham or case is raised to the point of uselessness unless one knows braille.

But why get stuck on metelasse design when you can go All-American with Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville pineapple matching pillowcases. Things could be worse. You could find yourself attracted to the My Pillow guy.

Here at the Angelo household, I make it a nightly ritual to toss the 16 designer pillows off the bed and onto the floor where I’ll be sure to step on them in the middle of the night. It could be worse. I could be studying the thread count on our davenport.