Interim Order on Sheet Wrinkle Sensitivity
A wrinkle ignored all day becomes, at 11pm, the only wrinkle that exists.
What Would Have Happened If the Sheet Had Been Smoothed at 9am
Background
The sheet was wrinkled at 9am. Evidence is available. The person who made the bed was aware of this. No corrective action was taken. The sheet remained wrinkled through breakfast, through the workday, through dinner, through two separate visits to the bedroom involving full-length lying-down positions, and through approximately six hours in which the wrinkle was available to cause discomfort and did not.
The Incident
At 11:07pm, the person entered the bed with the stated intention of sleeping. Within ninety seconds, the wrinkle was identified. Not as a wrinkle that had persisted for fourteen hours. As a new problem.
What Would Have Happened Otherwise
Had the sheet been smoothed at 9am, the following outcomes are modeled with reasonable confidence:
The wrinkle would not exist at 11:07pm. The person would have entered the bed and fallen asleep at a rate consistent with tiredness. No intervention on the sheet would have been required.
Instead: the person smoothed the sheet manually. This required sitting up, which activated wakefulness. Smoothing the sheet created a new asymmetry near the pillow. The pillow was repositioned. The repositioning surfaced a secondary fold near the foot of the bed. The foot-of-bed fold was deemed acceptable. The decision to deem it acceptable also required conscious attention.
Elapsed time to sleep from this point: longer than it would have been.
Ruling
The sheet wrinkle was available for correction for fourteen hours. It was not corrected. Correction was deferred to the moment when correction was most costly, both in wakefulness activated and in decisions required.
This is not unusual. The governing principle appears to be: a wrinkle that exists before the body is horizontal is not yet a wrinkle. A wrinkle that exists once the body is horizontal is the only wrinkle.
The counterfactual in which the sheet was smoothed at 9am remains theoretical. Available evidence suggests it will not be tested tomorrow.
Status: Behavior unchanged. Ongoing jurisdiction.