Pillows should be soft.

Oh man, I'm so tired, I think I'm just going to lay down my head. Yawwwwn. Oh good, there's a pillow here, that will allow me to sleep and put the past 96 hour staying up bender behind me.

THUD.

Blast, a rock hard pillow has foiled me once again. There will be no sleep today. What's the world record for staying up? Eleven days? I guess I'll have to do that then.

Pillows are designed to be soft, yet for some inexplicable reason, stores sell pillows that many people will confuse for boulders—jagged, uncomfortable, hard and impossible to use for restful sleep. Good for crushing villagers and disheartening coyotes, but of little other use.

People, we're no longer cavemen. We can use life's luxuries like feathers and fake feathers so we no longer have to rely on these stone age contraptions. We've spent several millenia moving away from awful sleeping arrangements, I just don't understand why anyone would want to go back.

I realize there is a time and a place for some of these pillows. No, not for decorative purposes, because soft ones can be just as decorative as hard ones. Although, use one of these bad boys at a pillow fight during a sleepover and nobody will make fun of you for wearing Power Rangers underoos. But once everyone has had their Goodnight Tang (Tang diluted with vodka) suddenly that person has to go to sleep on a hard pillow. He might not have concussion, but he's also not going to have a good night of sleep.

I believe that's how Alexander the Great rose to power.

This is like one of those Highlights Magazine "Can You Spot
the Difference" pictures. But there is no difference.

One of the worst offenders in the hard pillow racket is people who use decorative pillows and put shams over them. Apparently they keep their shape because they're unsuable and pillow refuse to touch them. Really it should come as no surprise that people put “shams” on those things. It's kind of like the ultimate FU from the pillow making industry.

When I worked at a newspaper, I needed to stay overnight in the newsroom once to do an early story the next day. I didn't know this when I showed up to work, so I ended up improvising a pillow out of my shoes.

And that “pillow” actually allowed much more comfort than some of these so-called actual pillows. Although I suppose that partially had to do with expectations—you hear the word “pillow' and you think soft. You hear the word “shoes” and you think walking. When you use shoes for sleeping, you don't expect soft. You do expect the need to reconsider your life choices though.

I really don't want to live in a world where shoes can trump pillows on a softness scale. Unless people are using pillows as shoes to break into the Louvre and do some sort of infamous art heist. That, I can get behind. But not this. Pillows lost out to shoes, and that's just not right.

But that's the only occasion when pillows should be used as shoes and vice versa. We need to go back to when shoes were shoes and pillows were pillows. Pillows demand to be soft. That's why I will never purchase a hard pillow. On my bi-four-yearly pillow purchasing excursions, I will make sure to get the soft ones and let the pillow industry know this is what we want. I encourage you to do the same. Don't just sleep on it, demand that you can actually sleep on it!