Trending
I'm a trendsetter.
I realized this lying around the other day scrolling through my phone. As I adjusted my pillow and reached for another chip, a story popped onto the screen about "the latest TikTok craze" called "bed rotting."
Here's how bed rotting works -- you stay in bed all day.
That's pretty much it.
You're not there to sleep, but I don't think that's against the rules. You're supposed to just lie around swiping the screens on your devices, watch TV, reading books -- pretty much anything except what you're supposed to be doing, such as dishes, laundry, mowing, going to work, etc.
If the phone rings, don't answer it -- especially if it's the boss demanding to know where you are.
You could, I suppose, text back: "Boss, go rot in bed!" The boss sounds a little high-strung, expecting you to fulfill duties as assigned and silly stuff like that. It zaps your zen to zilch.
Bed rotting is supposed to do wonders for one's mental health. It's a great new discovery.
No, it's not. I was a devoted practitioner decades ago. But trying to chill proved stressful: "Burton William, get down here and go milk those cows. NOW!"
"Just one more chapter," I pleaded. "Frank and Joe are about to rescue Chet from the kidnappers."
In those unenlightened days -- before the invention of TikTok and mental health -- bed-rotters were mislabled "lazy, no-good-for-nothings" and often resulted in a parental threats to "light up your britches."
My parents owe me an apology. A few college professors do, too.
I escaped a 7:45 a.m. editing class with a "D." I was too busy bed rotting to make it to classes, so I invented my own style of copy editing and newspaper design for the finals. The instructor wasn't big on self-expression.
Spouses also fail to understand the benefits of bed-rotting.
By the time I married Terry in 2008, I had moved my whole life into the bedroom. Half the bed was littered with books, papers, DVDs, clothes and other necessities of life. Propped up on pillows, I slurped bowls of Cap'n Crunch and Alpha-Bits while chuckling at cartoons on the TV in the corner. If the phone rang -- I left the landline in the dining room -- I'd mute Bugs Bunny, strain my ears to hear the answering machine, and paw around for a pen to scribble an indecipherable note on the night stand tissue box.
My mental health was never better. To quote a line from the Doobie Brothers -- oh yeah, I kept several stacks of 1970s CDs on the bed, too -- "And I ain't got no worries / 'Cause I ain't in no hurry at all."
Then I got married. Terry informed me that she required at least half of the bed (and 80 percent of the covers), and that I wasn't going to lie around all day slopping Cocoa Puffs when there are gutters to be cleaned, furniture to be fixed and bills to be paid.
"You are not going to rot your life away," she ordered.
I was forced to wear clean clothes and accomplish things. It wrecked my mental health but everyone around me seemed to be in much better moods.
So as the guy who began the trend, I say to you TikTokers and YouTubers in all sincerity, good luck rotting. It's not as restful as it looks.
-- Don't be fooled. Cole now lounges in his easy chair all night. Wake him at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.