There's a reason satin sheets are not on any list of annual anniversary gifts, lists that include everything on earth. Seriously, the lists include the predictable (crystal, gold, silver and other treasures of the earth like silverware), the weird (aluminum, willow, wool and "animals"), and the romantic (flowers, candy and heart-shaped candle holders from the Signals catalog). Nowhere on any anniversary gift list anywhere includes bedding that will maim your spouse and leave you with a handicapped parking pass.
Satin sheets seem like the ultimate romantic anniversary gift. But they are AWOL from the lists not only because those lists are ridiculous and antiquated and signs that we used to be terrible gift-givers who required ideas from strangers, but because satin sheets are dangerous hazards in the home. You might as well put "ammonia mixed with bleach" on the list. Or more appropriately, "walking hand-in-hand down an ice-covered Slip-n-Slide on an Alp while wearing stilettos." Satin sheets are assholes of static-hoarding slipperiness that want to kill you.
Why is satin even a fabric at all? Don't we have enough good fabrics? And whose bright idea was it to make sheets and pillowcases out of it? And why are they allowed to sell them without a warning label, a prescription and proof of insurance?
Over the holidays, we had a lot of company, and everyone required sheets, even the people who were crashing on couches and curling up on dining room chairs to catch a few winks before resuming the binge-drinking. So when I tried to change our master bedroom bed, every sleep-related piece of thing in the house was dirty. I had to dig deep and bring out the satin sheets.
I don't know where we got them, but it seems they have always been around. It's possible that they were a bridal shower gag gift from one of my funny friends. That sounds about right. But it's more likely that satin sheets are worming their way into every master bedroom in America. We are lulled into not being suspicious because of their soft and sexy shininess.
"Oh no." My husband walked into the bedroom that night and saw the smoky sage green, the color that shows up on paint strips as You're Getting Lucky Tonight, Stud peeking out from under the bedspread.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't have anything else. All the sheets are in the hamper and if I waited to get caught up on laundry, we'd be operating our own sleep deprivation study here. One night on satin sheets isn't going to kill you."
Oh, but it might. It surely might.
It had taken me 40 minutes just to make the bed. You know how when you're making a bed you take a sheet and, holding onto the edges with your fingertips, you snap it so the sheet floats up like one of those big parachute things at church camp and then settles down gently onto the bed? Yeah, well, satin sheets hit the bed and take off like a jet pack has been installed on the parachute. You have to go into the next room to find it and wrestle it back onto the bed. And you can forget putting anything on top of the satin sheet. Our bedspread kept melting off to one side. I had it adjusted just right, and minutes later I'd find the whole bedspread-sham-decorative-throw-pillow operation looking like a Salvatore Dali painting of my bed.
It seems the only thing that doesn't slide off satin sheets with the speed and violence of a bullet coming out of a gun barrel is static. I had to stop and wet my fingertips 13 times to keep myself from being electrocuted by static cling.
"The last time we slept on these satin sheets, I rolled over to turn off the light and slid onto the floor and almost broke a hip, and I was 28," my husband said.
This was true. But it was getting late and I was tired. I decided to put some lipstick on it. "If it's just one night - and it is . . . it so is - maybe I should dig out that satin nightgown that one of my funny friends gave me for a shower gag gift and we can pretend we're newlyweds."
Electro-shocked newlyweds with broken hips. Don't say I don't know how to put the magic back in a marriage.