Yes, I’m going to let you know about my bedroom habits. There are four of us in our bed now and its not Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.  It’s me and my wife…and our two iPads.  Sometimes it’s actually five, when she also uses her…iPhone.  So it’s hard to get her attention now, but then I did buy her the iPad.  How did it get to be this way??

When we go to bed, we each open our iPads. I like to read my book and she likes to do her puzzle or listen to Garrison Keilor or Robert from Great Courses… so maybe there are really more than 4 of us in the bed.  When we wake up, I get her breakfast in bed, then we both read the paper – at the same time – on our iPads.  She finishes earlier than me and moves to her puzzle or receives phone messages from our international friends – someone is always awake in the world, happy to talk.

How did it happen?

It’s funny how it happened. Just a couple of years ago, we used to have a conventional relationship in bed.  We wrapped up the day, reflected, relaxed, together.  You know, talking, kissing, cuddling, …, sleeping.  Now I sometimes wonder why we even sleep in the same bed.  We might as well be in separate single beds.  Well, maybe not.  Sometimes.

Our overlapping but different worlds don’t go to sleep any more.  They are always awake, always present, always calling.  There’s no down time.  No private, close-the-doors time.  And I imagine that the cookies in the iPads and iPhones know much more about us than we want to know they know, but we are too afraid to ask that.  We don’t talk as much as we used to.  We are too busy with other people.  We don’t talk with each other.  We talk to each other about our separate worlds.

We like it!

Worse, we actually like it! Since the kids left home and we stopped working full time, breakfast in bed has become a new luxury.  It’s assisted by not having to get up and go get the physical paper or wait for it to be delivered.  The paper is there 24/7, updated all the time, in bed, wherever.  Actually there are several papers now, not just the one that used to be delivered.  And Facetime means we sometimes have the internationals in bed with us too, though sometimes we just don’t answer the phone, even for them.

We haven’t added the TV to the bed yet. My wife wanted to, but I think the TV’s time is over now.  iView, You Tube, SBS On Demand and Netflix have taken over.  They come into bed with us whenever we want them, and sometimes those SBS movies remind me what bed used to be like.

It sounds crowded. No wonder bed sizes are getting bigger.  But I’m not sure we could go back to being just the two of us like the old days – pre-2010.  I think we’d both find it rather boring.  We’ve become used to being stimulated electronically all the time.  Talking to just one person seems so limited. I mean that’s why I’m writing this, rather than talking to you.  And I better not tell you where I’m writing from…