Special Stretch Sheets Snug on Our Dorm Mattresses

One of the joys of college life is living in a dormitory, or as the locals call them: the dorms. They come in all forms, all forms that are oftentimes all on the same campus. Lofts, bunk beds, ordinary beds, mattresses strewn about, probably hammocks too.

In our dorms, as they'd previously been used for a different purpose than housing four-year co-ed college students, they weren't all that large. When our school changed course every three rooms were grouped together in one of the dorms. The middle room was set up as a "study room" where there were four desks lining the walls. The two rooms neighboring this room were the rooms where the students slept, two students to each side, & had their dresser & closet space, though the closet space was uber limited. For two people to share, what amounted to, maybe, two feet total, of hanging space, was rough.

What was also rough, or at least very different, & something to accommodate to, was not only having bunk beds, rather having extra long twin mattresses on these beds. At my parents' house I rotated weekly between these & these. That's the organized-ness of how my parents rolled. It's necessary to have more than one, though more than two isn't so much as an unnecessary expenditure & it'd take up unnecessary space too. We'd have one on our bed. Then, when it was laundry day, we'd take the dirty sheets off & put on the spare set while the dirty set were being washed. Then the cycle would continue again the following week. My brother had a couple of manly prints like these & these.

When we'd opened up mail as I prepared to head off to my first year of college, the paperwork indicated it'd be necessary for me to bring extra long sheets, like these, for the freshman dorm mattresses. Mom kindly explained that it wasn't an entire sheet set that I'd be needing, just the fitted sheet. This, after all, would be most cost effective & therefore we'd be on a mission to locate just the needed additional fitted sheet. The sheets I already used on the mattress in my bedroom would work, just not tucked underneath as far, on this extra long mattress. This was a bummer because I'd not be able to pull up the straight sheets as far & I liked them to tuck over my shoulder as well as fold over the top of the blanket or comforter covering the mattress & bed. Of course, it was an accommodation, as well as a slight disappointment, when I also learned that one of these accommodating extra long sheets would be an exact match, at least to the naked eye, yet the other one would be an obvious mis-match, though acceptable & definitely useable, I was let down, though I also moved on as these were on long, invisible lists of "oh wells".

The bigger convenience was that, through all of the four years of college which I spent there, each dorm where I stayed (& there were three) all had these same extra long mattresses, so these fitted sheets, purchased for this especial accommodation, were thoroughly used in four years time.

It was only throughout my freshman year that the bed I slept on was a bottom bunk. My junior year is the only other year where I shared a dorm room, & in that room's set up, its size allowed us to keep our spaces separate, me to the left-hand side, my roommate to the right-hand side. And in that room it was a complete joke on how opposite we were. I had simple & organized soft colors (mainly pastels); my roommate had quite a dominance of jungle & wildlife & all the colors that come with that stereotype.

I've no especial memories of these sheets, other than their general uniqueness of being other than the factory originally designed them & knowing that they'd one day be reunited with their original counterparts awaiting them in my parents' linen closet.

My biggest delights would've been sitting atop them with food in hand, thinking of how Dad would always remark, "No food in the upstairs." A consideration he's completely & utterly firm on to this day, I might assuredly add. Because there I sat, on the bed where I'd sleep, which, under my parents' roof would've been located "in the upstairs", & yet I could eat, with blissful confidence, perched atop those sheets, which Mom & Dad had purchased for my good use, & I was okay. I was more than okay; I was simply grand.

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