The other day after golf, one of the guys was complaining…. about everything, it seemed. One of the group said, “Boy, you must have got up on the wrong side of the bed today.” Well, that got me to thinking…. I’d heard that phrase used to describe someone that’s grumpy, or unhappy, fairly often over the years. If you get up rested, happy and ready to tackle the day, then you must have got up on the right side of the bed.
I sleep on the left side of the bed — every night, and I get up on the left side of the bed every day. So how can it be the right side one day but the wrong side on another day?
Sayings like these, whose meanings aren’t clear from the words themselves, are called idioms. I’ve talked about idioms on this blog many times. My extensive research discovered, not surprisingly, that there is no clear explanation as to how the idiom “getting up on the wrong side of the bed” came about. But, like most of these things, there are a few theories — for example:
One theory claimed the saying came about as the result of an old superstition that it was unlucky to get out of bed with your left leg first. This superstition appears to have started in Ancient Rome, where many Romans were careful to always get out of bed on the right side. This fit with other superstitions of the time that the “left” side was unlucky. Some people, including Augustus Caesar, believed that it was bad luck to put on your left shoe first.
Others believed that this and other idioms that contain the phrase “the wrong side,” merely reflect the fact that there are positive and negative aspects of any situation.
The ancient Egyptians believed that good and bad spirits lived among earthlings. They believed that the “left side” belonged to the forces of death and destruction. Hence, if you woke up on the left side of the bed, you were most likely possessed by evil spirits and you were probably going to do bad things during the day.
These beliefs have taken root so deeply in the collective mind of mankind that even today some of the hotels in various parts of the world face the left sides of the beds in their rooms to the wall to prevent customers from waking up on the wrong side. But of course, someone always has to be different… in this case, it’s the Chinese. The left side belief is reversed in ancient Chinese tradition. Feng shui experts believe that it’s best to get out of bed on the left side. The left side is associated with money, power and health — getting out on the right side will being death and despair.
So ‚ is it possible that there’s actually a right and a wrong side of the bed? Some people think there is.
(Some) sleep scientists rely on psychology to conclude that the left side of the bed is right and the right side of the bed is wrong. They know that the left side of the brain controls logic and rational thought, while the right side of the brain controls emotion and imagination. If you get out of bed on the left side, they believe that you may focus your energy on logic and stay away from volatile emotions.
So what do you think? Is there a right and wrong side of the bed? I’m not sure, but no matter which side you get up on, Claire has the solution — she says, “Every day when I wake up I can be happy or unhappy. I choose happy!”
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