My Bed in College was a Busy Place

While I was in college, I developed a habit of sleeping with an insane amount of stuff on my bed. This was because I had the top bunk of an extremely high bunk bed that for reasons unknown to me had no ladder. The only way to get into my bed was to climb up the side of the metal frame. One side of the bunk was partly blocked by my desk, which was not good to climb on because I didn’t want to accidentally break my word processor. (Ah, the good old days!) The other side of the bunk was next to the window, which was scary because if I fell while climbing up, I’d go right through the window and plunge seven stories onto Fifth Avenue.

I didn’t make it any easier to get up when I dug up my My Little Pony tent bed (like the one at left, but decorated with My Little Pony) from home one vacation and brought it back to my dorm. When the tent sheet was on, I had to climb up the side of the bed and instead of flopping right onto the mattress, I had to swing forward and around to get into the fucking tent. (That thing rocked, though. I wonder what I did with it.)

Coming down from the bunk was also literally a pain. The bed was at least six feet high. I usually jumped down and landing was hard on the ankles, especially since I lived large and on the chubby side in those days. It was still better than climbing down by that fucking window, though. After one or two close calls, I had to completely abandon that method.

Since getting into and out of bed was such a production, any time I needed something, it was a major effort to get it. For example, if I got in bed to do some homework but forgot, say, a pencil, I had to go through the whole rigamorole of jumping down and climbing up. As a result, I kept as many supplies in my bed as I could. My bed had pens and pencils, paper, books, Kleenex, pajamas, extra socks, sweaters, Theo (teddy bear), etc. in it. The room had a built-in bookcase that ran up the wall and above the bed, which was convenient for text book storage at the bed level and also my alarm clock, which of course required an extension cord to plug in.

The only thing I didn’t keep up there was food and water. No water because I seem to have wandered through the first 22 years of my life in a state of perpetual dehydration, so it didn’t occur to me at the time to have a water bottle handy. I didn’t keep food up there because it was too gross to have crumbs and shit in the bed, and I wasn’t a total slob. I say total slob as opposed to slob because I didn’t change my sheets all that often. Can you imagine the farce involved when a five foot tall person attempts to put a sheet on a bed that is six feet up in the air? It was ridiculous. I could’ve broken my neck! Unfortunately, I then developed the bad habit of not changing the sheets too often as well as sleeping with lots of crap in the bed. Needless to say, Husband is not pleased.