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"It happened again!" I grabbed my wife by the hand and tugged her toward the bedroom. "You've gotta see this."
Terry looked right. Left. Up. Down. And shrugged. "What?"
I spread my arms. "The bed. Can't you see it?"
"Big flat thing with pillows on it? Center left of the room? Flanked by nightstands? I believe I noticed it."
"Well?"
"At risk of repeating myself, what?"
I slapped my forehead. "It's made!"
"Yeah?"
"When I left this morning, it was a rumpled mess, with the bedspread bunched on the floor where I kicked it off in the middle of the night. But I come home and wow, it's made. All the sheets tucked in. The bedspread back on the bed and smoothed out. The pillows fluffed."
Terry nodded. "Uh-huh."
"How do you think it does that?" I waved my arms. "It never used to do that. It's only started doing that since, let me see, when did it first start... ?"
Terry's eyebrows arched. "Right after we married?"
"Yeah, that's right. Right after we got married, the bed started making itself while I was at work. It never did that for me. It must be you."
Terry closed her eyes. "Yeah. It was me all right."
"OK, so how do we get it to stop doing that?"
"Why?"
I reached for the newspaper on my nightstand. "It's not healthy. See, it's right here. Scientists told the BBC that beds are covered with a million or so dust mites every night. They're little bugs that like warm, moist places. So if you leave the bed unmade, they die off."
"And that's why you never made your bed?"
I shook my head. "No. I didn't know about the dust mites. Not consciously. I'm just instinctively smart. My unconscious brain must have figured it out when I was kid. I never made my bed whenever Mom wasn't looking."
"Microscopic dust mites aren't going to bother you."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "So you WANT the bed to be made? Why?"
Terry ticked items off on her fingers. "First Navy Adm. William H. McRaven once said making your bed is the beginning of changing the world. Making the bed first thing in the morning means you've accomplished the first task of the day. It will encourage you to go on to the next task and the next until you've really accomplished big things."
She tapped a second finger. "Decluttering expert Karen Kingston said if you leave your bedding in a messy heap, you tend to muddle through the rest of your day. I read that in BuzzFeed Life."
Finger three: "Charles Duhigg wrote in 'The Power of Habit' that making the bed every morning starts the chain reaction of better habits and productivity throughout the day."
Terry unhinged her fourth finger. "Most important, I like it that way."
I rubbed my chin. "You know, I'm beginning to think the bed isn't making itself."
"You don't say."
I squinted at the bedspread. "I bet it's those pesky dust mites. They're pulling the covers up every morning so they don't dry out and die of dehydration. Dust mites are sneaky critters."
Terry brushed past me. "Yeah, that's probably it. I'm so glad that you're instinctively smart."
I watched my sweetie stomp down the hallway. Then I yanked the covers off the bed. She'd thank me later. You just can't be too careful with dust mites.
— Short-sheet Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.