JAMES LILEKS: Show Me the Pillows.

Last stop: I made up the guest room, and thought: perfect! Looks nice.

But I was so very, very wrong. At the end of the night my sister-in-law came out holding a pillow, and asked . . . is this right? My wife was present, and from her expression I gathered I had committed a social blunder on par with giving the Queen a brisk Dutch Rub. What? What had I done?

I’ll tell you what I did. I had given them the Show Pillows. TO SLEEP ON.

The female need to pile a bed with useless pillows is an old and not particularly novel observation. It mystifies men.  It’s like serving a meal where the plate is loaded with Show Potatoes, and you have to remove ten tubers before you can start. It’s like having a workbench in the garage with Show Hammers. Don’t pound with that! That’s the nice hammer we want company to see! It’ll get nicked and dinged.  Or like going to someone’s house and finding out they have a Show Dog. No, no, don’t pat him on the head. Here, use this dog. And there’s some panting happy mutt they pull out of a closet. This is the company dog.

It reminds me of the bathrooms of my childhood, which were stocked with forbidden things: decorative soap in a nice dish engraved with intricate patterns that evaporated on contact with water, and decorative towels. You ended up drying your hands on the curtains, or patting them dry on the inevitable polyester shag toilet-seat cover.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™