I may be neater than many bachelors; at least, I like
such things as bed linen, socks, and underwear to be folded and stored
properly. But after many moons, I concede that I have met my match in that
diabolical monstrosity called the fitted
sheet.
Removing a fitted sheet from the dryer and attempting
to fold it neatly, or approximately neatly, or just in a way that results in
something other than a mound of crumpled cotton, is an exercise in frustration.
You would think that folding these sheets would not be
very difficult. But handling one eventually leads to the conclusion that fitted
sheets were designed by M.C.Escher. They have the properties of Möbius strips
or Klein bottles. When you think you have the ‘inside’ facing in one direction
and begin folding, you discover that the infernal thing has no inside and no
outside. By some esoteric sorcery the inner seam magically appears on the outer
side. The ‘long’ and ‘short’ sides somehow change positions randomly. You
become impatient, grouchy, irate. Life is too short to try to make sense of the
thing. Miserable wretched object, I’ll show you… and you wind up stuffing the
misshapen mass of fabric into your linen closet, where it sits smugly on the
shelf, a clean but smirking reproach to your sense of decency and order.
Of course that source of solutions to every human ill,
the Internet, will provide you with guidance on this matter as it does on all
others. I have watched a video in which a woman, with a few deft twists of her
wrist, causes a fitted sheet to assume a perfectly docile, rectangular shape
with no more effort than would be required to fold a napkin. I cannot follow. I
can only gasp in awe and say, like Professor Quirrell, “What is this magic?”
