This innocence caused a lot of shows - for instance I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show - to focus instead on important topics involving soap suds or pies. Meanwhile, we were expected to believe that normal, married couples slept in side-by-side twin beds, which just so happened to be the same sleeping arrangement my brother and I shared growing up.

Now, five decades later, we learn from scientists in a soon to be published report in the scientific journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms (look for it in your grocer’s checkout line, Jennifer Aniston is on this month’s cover), that women would sleep better with the twin bed arrangement.

The study claims that women sleep less soundly when sharing a bed with a spouse while guys don’t seem to have a problem because we could fall asleep just about anywhere, including while lying on top of a fully operating airplane jet engine. Provided, of course, the jet engine was on the ground and stationary and not in mid-flight. Guys wouldn’t stir the entire night except to get up once or twice to use the bathroom.

The study doesn’t actually mention a jet engine, but it is true that guys can fall asleep anywhere. If we couldn’t, guys never would have invented camping. And we never would have invented hunting and fishing trips, which gives guys even more reason to go camping.

Another thing guys can do is fall asleep in front of the television set. Women can do this also, but guys can do it while remaining in a perfectly upright, sitting position. Eventually, however, our head will flop back like a Pez dispenser as we enter the sleep phase known as RSM (Rapid Snoring Movement). This is usually followed by a sharp pain in the side caused by the spouse jabbing an elbow between the ribs to wake us up. Apparently, this is done to inform us we were snoring, which when you think about it, we didn’t need to know.

So for a guy to go into a quiet bedroom and sleep soundly next to his spouse is not particularly difficult. But according to the study, it is not so easy for women. The thought is that women are lighter sleepers because of their traditional child rearing role. Therefore, they tend to be more attuned to what is going on. This makes them restless especially when sharing a bed, although, I don’t know if the study mentions what size bed.

On vacation, Beth and I have at times slept in a king-sized bed. King refers to a specific mattress size which has approximately the same dimensions as a standard helipad. When two spouses get in from opposite sides of a king-sized bed, it can take a good twenty minutes of bed scooting to reach each other in the middle to say goodnight.

(Bed scooting is the process wherein you are lying in bed under the covers and try to inch your way over like some sort of demented, pajama-wearing larva.)

At home, Beth and I still have a full-sized bed. I know what you are thinking, “You moron. You’re obviously mistaken; it must be a queen-sized bed because no adult couple in modern day America sleeps on a full-sized bed.” The fact is we do, which means when we get into bed from opposite sides there is little bed scooting necessary because we are already in the middle.

Despite what the study found, Beth swears she sleeps better when I am there. One factor could be that while I do snore, at least I don’t thrash about much when I sleep.

At some point at night I end up sleeping on my back, and once there I never move again. I should qualify that: I don’t know that I move. Whenever I wake up I am usually still on my back and in the same general location. So my assumption is that I remain fairly motionless.

Which is good news from a sleeping arrangement standpoint. Besides, if we were in separate beds, Beth would have to get up out of hers to poke my ribs to let me know I was snoring.

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