How to survive pillow fights when marriage meets home décor

My wife and I had a pillow fight the other night. I don’t mean we playfully hit each with pillows until we fell over laughing. I mean we had a fight over pillows. 

It all started when Madeline bought some new pillows for our bed and put them on top of the pillows that were already on the bed, making a kind of bed full of pillows. 
Myron Kukla
“Why do we need more pillows for our bed?” I asked with my husband’s small brain. “You can hardly see the bed now,” I added because the small brain told me to. 

Well, you’d think I hit her with a pillow.

“They’re decorative, to liven up the room,” she said.

“But I thought our bedroom was quite lively with the 16 other pretty pillows on the bed,” I said.

“We need to refresh the look so our bed is inviting,” Madeline explained patiently, as if to a small child.

“The bed would look a lot more inviting if I could just crawl into it at night without having to dig through a wall of pillows after a hard day of watching TV.” 

Remembering pillow paucity

Well, that set her off into an explanation on the need for the various types of throw pillows and decorative accoutrements covering our bed.

My mind wandered off to thinking about when I was growing up. My brother, Stan, and I slept in the same room and had exactly one goose feather pillow each.  One night, we busted one up in a pillow fight that left the room looking like a fox attack in a hen house. 

To teach us a lesson, my mother didn’t replace the lost pillow, and my brother and I had to take turns sharing the remaining pillow on alternate nights until we graduated from high school.  

That was my experience with pillows until Madeline and I got married and she put two pillows for each of us on our bed. Four pillows on one bed? Hey, it was the ’70s and we were rebels. 

Somewhere in the 1980s or ’90s – my memory is not what it used to be–two pillows with decorative “pillow shams” appeared on our bed, on top of our bed pillows.  

“What are those for?” I asked. “We don’t need more pillows. Two each is plenty.”

“They are pillows with sham covers on them to decorate the bed and cover our sleeping pillows,” she said.

“So, these are pillows for our pillows?” I asked with that small husband brain.

Still piling up

Little did I know that the pillow-shammed pillows over the years were to be joined by their cousins—the accent throw pillows, bed rest pillows, and a few Moroccan sitting pillows.   

One day a duvet appeared.

“What’s that?” I wisely inquired.

“It’s a duvet.  It’s a decorative cover for the foot of the bed. You can also use it as a blanket over the comforter we sleep under.” 

“So, our blanket now has its own blanket.” 

Pillows became like a stealth army invading our bed. Smaller, mini pillows called Boho began to appear, then larger Bohemian pillows with fringes. Then came the seasonal picture pillows with flowers for spring and snow-covered forests for winter. 

At least none of the pillows had pictures of cats on them. That’s where I draw the line. 

As we slipped into our 60s, Madeline started adding support pillows to our collection. There was the lumbar pillow for our backs, the face pillow for our faces, and a cervical support pillow for our cores. 

The topper of them all was the “body pillow,” which is about four feet long, contours to your body, and is just so soft and cuddly to sleep with.  

I have no complaints about the body pillow.  I love to sleep with it whenever I can find it under all the other pillows. 

Myron J. Kukla is a Midwest humorist and author of Guide to Surviving Life, Confessions of a Baby Boomer, and the newly released mystery, Murder at Tulip Time, set in Holland, where he lives with his family. A former Lakeshore Press and Grand Rapids Press reporter, Kukla’s books are available locally at Readers World, Barnes & Noble, Bluestocking Books, and Expresso, and online at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and most major booksellers.