The following essays were among the best produced in Sue Ellen Gerrells' ENGL 101 class at Yokosuka.

At a glance, the furnishings in your house can appear ordinary. The sofa, for instance, is excellent for entertaining friends, because it’s not nearly as impersonal as using several chairs. It’s soft and comfortable, and you may spend every Saturday morning lying on it while watching cartoons. Ah, the good old sofa, no threat there. But what if the sofa wasn’t so innocent? Some items, like a coffee table, seem loyal and hardworking; they serve their purpose without any other agenda. Other pieces of furniture, however, may have more sinister plans. I have found such ulterior motives in my bed, my most well-equipped and devious nemesis.

Do not mistake its simple look for innocence. Oh no, this bed lies in wait for me like a Venus’ Flytrap, its jaws open and dripping, waiting to entwine their mandibles around me so that I might never leave. To the untrained eye, this may be hard to recognize, but through many clashes with this tenacious foe, I can alert you to its dangerous anatomy.

The first attack comes through its looks. The bed emanates comfort with its saturating softness. Just the promise of easy relaxation is enough to pull many in. The pillow, the purest form of this power, feels the weight of your head as it conforms to the shape, gripping you in its cushy deathlock, allowing the sheets to move into action.

The blankets and sheets use your own body heat against you. As you lie against their silky smoothness, warmth surrounds and pins you to the mattress. The mattress is the strongman. It keeps your body supported gently enough that you don’t even know you are its prisoner. And there you are, unwarily caged within its five-hundred-thread-count bars and Posturepedic floor.

The alarm clock has saved me from this imprisonment many a time, allowing me to report on this dangerous adversary.

The bed will not sit idly by when it has lost, though; it has one last trick, the bed-legs-of-toe-stubbing. While not necessarily causing you great harm, the pain from stubbing your toe on these legs will be a reminder that the bed is not an opponent to be toyed with, nor is it a forgiving loser.

These facets of the bed--the bear trap of a pillow, net-like sheets and blankets, and menacingly shapely mattress--can be temptations in and of themselves, but put together, the bed is more than the sum of its parts. It is an alluring siren that has brought this sailor to his doom more than once, and, more likely than not, will cause me again to make up excuses for being late.