Snugglebun

My grandmother used to have an interesting end-table in her home -- in fact, she still has it. It's large and round, almost like those big wooden spools you see lying around at construction sites, except not. The lip of the top and bottom of the end-table don't protrude as far from the cylindrical core as those construction spools. The end-table was dark wood, with a door that opened on its front. Inside this end-table was generally a single item: a strange sleeping-bag-like construction with weird arm-holes. (Click here for a sketch of what I remember this looking like.)

The sleeping-bag-thing had wings coming off of the sides of the part of the bag where your head rested. The wings had snaps on them that connected to the body of the bag at the upper-chest area. When you lay in the bag, then snapped the wings into place, you had your entire body sans head and arms, covered by the bag. I don't really know the purpose of having your shoulders protected like this, but there you go.

My grandmother called it a snugglebun. I can't recall whether she told us if that was the real name, as in Snugglebun®, or if that was just her down-home nickname for it.

The only reason I pointed that out is because there was something absurdly wonderful about that thing. When I slept at her house, wrapped up in that (when it was my turn -- the grandchildren all fought over this thing), with her cat Kit-Kat at my feet, inside the bag with me, I slept better than I did anywhere else.

Which is what I thought of last night when I climbed into bed. It's not at all cold here, but it's not hot, either. We've kept the air conditioner in our bedroom roaring day in and out for weeks. And at night the room gets cold. I mean Alaska-in-the-ice-age cold. I actually saw a penguin in the closet a few days ago.

Is there anything better than crawling into bed in a very cold room and burrowing beneath a thick layer of multiple comforters and sleeping bags? No.

Is there anything worse than climbing out from beneath a very thick layer of multiple comforters and sleeping bags into a cold room? No.

Unless, of course, there was a sniper waiting to shoot you as soon as you came out of the bed, and you were late for work and had to be there because you were getting your review and raise that day.

But if I had a snugglebun, life would be perfect. I would be able to do anything. They would call me Snugglebun Man!

Actually, no. I'd prefer that they didn't.

But they probably would anyway.

This is another story I should've kept to myself.