An emergency exit toga: why I love the top sheet
The extra bed sheet helps keep you the perfect temperature in the hotter months, and can act as a makeshift gown
The top sheet — the thin one that slips between the duvet and fitted sheet — wasn’t a familiar sight in the homes of relatives or friends I grew up around. Scots appear largely ambivalent about their role as bed linen, but people from plenty of other countries, usually the ones that regularly feel the sun, seem to swear by them.
Instead, I grew up amid an ever-expanding collection of mismatched blankets, including a few taken from Pakistan International Airlines in the late 1980s that my parents continue to treasure like heirlooms.
I had always thought top sheets were used only as props in post-coital scenes on TV and film. The man lounges bare-chested with the thin material draped carefully across his hips, while the woman lies beside him modestly covered just below her delicate collar bone. Then, as she sweeps off to the bathroom, the sheet, now artfully cinched under her arms, transforms into a floaty dress, the trail disappearing behind her into the ensuite as her lover sleeps.
Sadly, it wasn’t such shenanigans that led me to start using the top sheet, which, much to my surprise, I now swear by. It was instead a monster, the one hidden under my bed since childhood, that I can’t seem to evict as an adult.
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At times, while caught in that liminal state between sleep and wakefulness, I’m taunted by a shadowy presence. It looms over me, hungry for the revealing of a rogue ankle or any flash of bare skin.
Scientifically, the spooky apparitions are hallucinations from sleep paralysis — when your brain wakes up but your body doesn’t, leaving you cognitively hostage inside a frozen body until the episode passes. Often, your mind fills the time with panic, dread and, yes, monsters.
The only way to keep myself safe is by swaddling myself like a tightly tucked burrito, as I tend to experience sleep paralysis only when my limbs are exposed. This becomes impossible in summer when overheating forces me to fling off the duvet entirely.
But two years ago, when I splurged on a pricey bed set — mainly in the hope that its promised hypoallergenic benefits would appease my sensitive skin — everything changed. While making up the bed with new soft green sheets, I found a spare package I hadn’t realised came with the set. A top sheet. I decided to give it a go and slipped off to sleep underneath the added layer.
That night happened to be unseasonably warm. Instinctively, I shrugged off the comforter, returning to slumber under the cool sheet, undisturbed. Nary a sleep paralysis monster in sight. At first, I assumed it was a coincidence, until weeks turned into months, with episodes becoming fewer and further between. Turns out that all it took was one light, airy layer to protect my flailing appendages and trick my brain into better resisting the pull of sleep paralysis. It was a bamboo-blended miracle.
Since converting to the world of thread counts, I’m that annoying person impassioned by what most people figured out a long time ago. I used to buy whatever was on sale and hope for the best, but somewhere around prioritising clothes with pockets and a daily sunscreen application, the top sheet joined my descent into basic but comfortable adulthood.
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I now sleep soundly with the knowledge that if there was ever a fire alarm, I have something to quickly grab, wrap and go. An emergency exit toga, if you will. A teal veil of decency in the face of danger and judgment from neighbours with matching sleep sets.
The top sheet also happens to be an easily washable layer in the middle of what is essentially a human sandwich, buying me an extra week before I have to wrestle swathes of fabric into a washing machine again. It offers a brief reprieve from the cycle of playing mattress ping-pong as I lunge from one unruly corner to another to make the bed.
Using romantic comedies as a barometer, I like to think that owning a top sheet has finally bumped me up from quirky best friend to main character. The ethereal love interest sheathed in ivory-coloured fabric, long dark hair tumbling over bare brown shoulders, offering a coy smile as I glide into the tiled bathroom. Inside, I unravel the makeshift gown. My eyes linger on the door, wondering if, to be safe, I should instead use my trusted sheet as insulation so he can’t hear me pee.
