Anyone for a pillow fight? (From The Northern Echo)

Anyone for a pillow fight?

3:37pm Thursday 24th November 2011 in Dad At Large By Peter Barron

TIRED after a long week, I’d gone to bed early and was drifting off in the darkness when my wife came up an hour or so later.

She likes to read before she goes to sleep, so her bedside light went on.

It’s the kind of spotlight you see in war films when someone’s being interrogated and they’re blinded before the torture begins.

I turned over but she was sighing a lot and then she pulled at the duvet in an irritable manner, making it clear she wasn’t happy about something.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, shielding my eyes from the glare.

“That’s right,” she replied, “you come to bed early so you can grab all the pillows.”

All the pillows? I was lying on one proper pillow, supported by a Bart Simpson cushion left over from when the kids were little.

She, in contrast, has a pile of pillows so high that she towers over me like King Kong on top of the Empire State Building.

“What do you mean?” I protested, innocently. “I’ve only got one pillow.”

“Well, it’s my pillow,” she snapped, in a way that was decidedly unfriendly.

I admit that I lost it at this point, mumbling: “Here, have the pillow,” as I stomped off downstairs to sleep on the settee. There are plenty of cushions down there, but I did without – just to prove a point.

And there I lay, wallowing in the thought that there was a time she’d have given me almost anything but, after 23 years of marriage, I’m not even worth a pillow.

To give her full credit, she came into the lounge the next morning with a cup of tea and an apology.

“Sorry about last night,” she said.

“Well, I didn’t know it wasn’t my pillow,” I said, nursing a crick in my neck, but relieved to be making up.

And then came the bombshell: “It was your pillow,” she admitted.

“Jack stole my pillow.”

I was filled with a warm glow of self-righteousness but I’ve kept a dignified silence about this night of injustice – until now.

In the meantime, I’ve conducted a survey of dads in order to investigate the importance of pillows in a relationship.

I asked the following questions:

• How many pillows do you have?

• How many pillows does your wife/partner have?

• Are there strict ownership rules – do you have “his and her” pillows?

• Would you know the difference?

• Have you ever fallen out over pillows?

The results are fascinating. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, but the main findings are:

• On average, women have three times as many pillows as men. Women also like to supplement their pillows with scatter cushions which serve no clear purpose.

• Women are extremely possessive about their own pillows, but most men wouldn’t know the difference.

• The vast majority of couples have had “words” when the man has recklessly interfered with the woman’s pillow.

There was even one dad whose wife has gone to the lengths of initialising her pillows with a marker pen to make sure they can’t be swapped.

But I am most concerned about the young dad in our office who isn’t a year into his marriage yet, but is already encountering significant pillow friction. Whether he makes it to 23 years without being suffocated is highly questionable.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

I MET our eldest, walking down the street on a break from work the other day, and he clearly had something on his mind.

“Dad, I’ve put up with a lot over the past 21 years, with you writing about me in Dad At Large,” he said.

“But I draw the line at the Mayor of Darlington coming up to me and saying: “Ah, so you’re The Big Friendly Giant!’”

A COLLEAGUE was visiting family with his girlfriend, whose vegetarianism intrigued his five-year-old nephew.

As they gradually assembled a buffet without sausage rolls or chicken drumsticks, the little boy piped up: “We’re not having meat – because she’s a vampire.”