Beds have been used since cave people got sick of sleeping on dirt. The ultimate bed, made for a king, can fill up an entire room, even though people only use it to sleep on. Most king-sized beds look the same; they have hundreds of pillows which ultimately get thrown off the bed when it’s time to sleep, a thick comforter for warmth, and a plain linen sheet so that the sweat that comes off people while sleeping does not infect the perfect mattress below it. 

Some people make beds for a living. Maids at hotels, or wealthy people’s houses, wake up every morning from their beds and perfectly arrange the comforter, sheets, and unnecessary pillows on top of others’ beds. In the military, when a soldier fails to make his sheets tight enough so that a quarter can bounce off of them, he is forced to do pushups as penance for his failure. Our mothers tell us our whole lives to “make your bed,” all for us to destroy it that same day in a vicious cycle. Some think that whether or not you make your bed says a lot, but a bed can tell you more about a person than just whether they are messy. 

It was well after midnight on a Monday. I had just finished the last of my calculus homework when I went to the kitchen for a drink. Walking through the dark halls, I tried to hear the reassuring sound of my father's snoring booming out from my parents' room, but I heard nothing. I stood in the middle of the hall, wondering if all the homework had made me deaf. My heart sank without my Dad’s snoring; it was never this quiet. Knowing I had to investigate, I tip-toed towards my parent's room, fully opening the cracked door leading into their bedroom. Prepared for the worst, I balled my hands up into fists, ready to take down the attacker that had come for my parents, but when I got there, everything seemed to be as it should. My mom slept in a fetal position facing me and my Dad, wait. My Dad was nowhere to be seen. His side of the bed was made, but it was filled with balls of dust, almost like the ones rolling around in Oklahoma. As I stared at his side of the bed in shock and disbelief, I could suddenly hear my Dad's unmistakable snoring rising from the living room. No longer worrying about the rest of my family sleeping, I rushed down the stairs to confirm what my ears had told me. My Dad slept on the couch, a makeshift bed, but not a real one. 

I thought back to my childhood; waking my parents up on Christmas morning, unable to wait any longer to open the presents Santa had brought, going into their bedroom in the middle of the night after the monster in my dream attacked, and watching his hazel eyes meet her blue eyes as I sat between them in their bed watching a movie way past my bedtime. When they got married, they promised they would be together. They would spend every night together as a family. Even when things got tough, when it was time to go to bed, they would settle their disputes, climb into their king-sized bed, and fall asleep. They broke their promise.