Growing up, when any of my family were sick we didn’t stay in bed; we took our pillow out to the couch. When more than one of us were sick, we pulled out the hide-a-bed in the couch. And one time I remember there being 3 of us in the hide-a-bed, one on the love seat, and one on a bed on the living room floor made out of the unused couch cushions. In fact, I only remember one bought of the flu when I spent most of my time in bed, and that was because we had guests staying with us. That’s the bought of the flu where my temperature spiked to 105 a couple of times and when I read David Copperfield. That was a memorable flu in so many unpleasant ways… I’m pretty sure I don’t like that book just on its own merits, but it’s entirely possible that I don’t like it for some fever-related reasons, too.

Anyway, this “going to bed” when you’re sick was something we’d heard about from books, TV, and friends, but we couldn’t really see the point. There wasn’t much about spending a day in bed that sounded appealing. Our bedrooms weren’t interesting, and there was really no call for them to be interesting. They were just for sleeping in at night. There was no TV there (and for the earliest part of my life, TV was a kind of magical thing that only appeared during the Olympics or when we were sick). There were no books or toys there. And why go out to get those and come back when all you had to do was go out to the daytime areas of the house and rest there? No, being in bed was boring. The couch was the place to be.

Even now, with Netflix and the entire internet on my laptop, I generally move dutifully out to the couch when I’m home sick. I can count on one hand the times I’ve decided to stay in bed. Bedrooms are for night time — everywhere else is for daytime, and old habits die hard.

Today, though, not moving out to the couch freed me from the default of turning on the TV, or facing the book I didn’t want to read anyway. Today I just wanted lie there and feel the cat snuggling against the backs of my knees and play Settlers of Catan on my iPod or listen to Wait Wait Don’t Tell me or watch the breeze flutter the curtain. Today I stayed in bed.