Which side of the bed is the left side? Is the answer based on the perspective of laying in the bed (person’s head at the head end)? Is the answer based on viewing it from the foot of the bed, looking at the head of the bed? Is there an “anatomical position” or special terminology like in boating for this?
For context: My boyfriend and I can’t agree on this. We change who gets which side based on the shoulder we’d predominantly sleep on and how it’s feeling. This let’s us get good cuddles before shoulder pain gets irritated. He comes to bed after me. A while back he asked what side I’m sleeping on. I said “left”. Later that night, he comes in and almost lays directly on me because he claims “left” is the other side. Since then we have to describe which side using complicated descriptions.
Imagine the bed is a clock. The 12 o’clock position is at the head — I don’t think anything else makes sense. That makes it unambiguous.
The positions are 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock.
This will only lead to more confusion.
And 3 is obviously on the right side of a clock and 9 on the left so the debate is settled.
Not if you consider the clock’s face is facing you. Facing your face. And so you can’t expect its right and wrong to be the same as yours.
Let’s say you have a day to move your stuff and you’re down to the last minute. You only have time for one more trip back inside. Your girlfriend says to grab whatever’s left of the clock. You go inside and look at its clockwork face, still gazing up at you with blank, bright numbers. Where the clock has hung all these years, to one side there’s a window with a bottle sitting there. To the other a vase with flowers. What do you take? What’s left of the clock, the vase, or do you say screw it and grab the bottle, without bothering to read carefully what’s inside?
I’m afraid this is all just more confusing, sorry
When we sleep, the monsters are at our 6.
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Forget left-right. Use port and starboard.
Driver’s side and passengers side?
Stage left and stage right? (Depends on where your curtains are).
People drive in different sides in different parts of the world.
The majority of people occupying the same bed will have congruent driver/passenger sides. Distant strangers don’t need to know which side you are referring to. Couples from different regions could adopt the local convention.
Seems like a flawed system. Why would auto manufactures not force the whole world to do it the same?
Fuck it, topside, underside.
Well, so which is the front and which is the back?
The front is where the spoiler isn’t.
Race car beds FTW.
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Yes, but without knowing which is fore and which is aft you cannot make that judgement.
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Define “properly.”
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Beds have a head and a foot, so the head is fore and the foot aft.
Ah. But in a bed race, it’s foot-first, implying a direction of travel that itself dictates head==aft and foot==fore. Totally different from how ironman flies, fwiw.
This is the correct answer. It’s how ships avoid running into each other. When whoever is steering the vessel is facing the bow (front, usually the pointy bit), port is their left, starboard their right. Ship’s running lights are red on the port side, green on the left. So if you’re out on the water at night, you can immediately see whether a ship is coming towards you or moving away. The rule for passing an oncoming vessel is “port to port”, thus avoiding confusion and collision.
Sitting up in bed I would consider the headboard the stern, because I have my back to it, and the foot the bow. So the area to starboard is right, and portside is left. Ahoy maties!!!
Where is the head and foot of the bed? Where are the top and the bottom? If the bed were stood up on the foot, is the top the front or the back? These questions may have something to do with the answer or are completely meaningless.
To avoid confusion, just say driver and passenger side.
I meant this to be a joke, but if you assume your bed drives forward toward the side with your pillows then it actually works. But if you read in bed with a reading pillow then I guess you probably want to drive your bed toward your feet side of the bed…
Driver and passenger side confuses me more because of your last point. It’s backwards. But it still needs to be named foot of the bed and not head because it’s where it feet go. So your first point also makes sense. Both are right and wrong at the same time
Following because this drives me nuts too
Someone save us, give us an authoritative answer
Happy to hear we aren’t the only ones.
Driver side, passenger side.
Which country?
Varies when you travel, but you also have to move the bed to the other side of the room.
Get nautical! Port and starboard.
I can get on board with this! (Pun intended)
But then which side is the Bow and which the Stern?
I would say the foot is the Stern and the head the bow I guess. Just to stay with a sort of head being the front of something and foot being the tail end.
Captain drives from the stern, though. If you sit up in bed you’re facing the bow.
But during normal use, you are facing the foot. I would think that makes it the Bow
I guess even if you are a stomach sleeper your feet are still towards the foot. Maybe this is best.
The bow would be the foot end, since you’re looking in that direction
I have a problem with right and left, and this question illustrates it pretty well. I tend to give directions as east, west, north, south. Left and right move around when you do, so can’t really be assigned to stationary items like a bed. Our bed has a northwest side and a southeast side.
There are whole tribes of people who have no words for left and right but have words for the cardinal directions; and all directions or labeling is based on one’s position and facing in these directions. “put this in your East hand” could be an imperative in the culture.
Having said that, leverage stage direction: Left and Right is Audience Left and Right, whereas Stage Left and Stage Right also exists and is generally the reverse. For instance, I exit Stage Left but to look at it you’d think it was the Right.
Those do exist, if you exit stage left facing away from the audience it stays put. Which side of your bed do you seat your audience and can we get a ticket to the performance?
Left/right are ambiguous terms.
Your solution would be a great way to practice spatial awareness. Could get exhausting constantly reorienting to where is north, but would benefit us in any post apocalyptic future.
My dance teachers always gave up and started using directions like “toward the mirror, towards the back wall, toward the door, toward the window” because right or left always a slight pause while I was figuring out which is which, and probably not just me. Once the dance was learned it was fine. Jazzercise teachers have to announce backwards (yell right when they are themselves going left), they wanted me to teach but sure it would break my hold on R/L entirely.
Driving it’s easier, left is the side with oncoming traffic here. But when giving directions I’m not driving and revert to the N,S,E,W - I am not a compass, just lived here a long time, I had a friend who was a compass, you could blindfold her, spin her around a bunch till dizzy and she could still find north, blindfolded.
Right, left if you’re looking at the bed from the foot.
Stage right, stage left if you’re looking out from the bed toward the foot.
He did theater stuff in HS, so we may adapt this if neither of us concede. Good work around.
Theater stuff in high school… Is that like making out backstage after rehearsal?
Probably along the same lines as band camp. I’m sure there’s a few “This one time…” stories.
the former is known as “audience left/right”
but allow me to use a more dated theatrical terminology:
prompt side and bastard prompt.
If you lay in the bed, depending on if you are lying on your back or stomach, left and right still change.
Ususally a bed is positioned with the head against a wall, so if you are facing the bed from the foot end, left and right are always the same. So I vote left/right is as seen from the foot end of the bed.
You’re in agreement with my BF.
I didn’t consider stomach sleepers. It’s a good counter. I sleep on my stomach for short periods of time, but laying prone isn’t default orientation (we typically don’t face the ground) so therefore shouldn’t be used as an indicator of default direction.
How do you reference position while in the bed? Just “your vs my” side?
Good to know that I’m not crazy!
But what if your bunk is on a marine vessel?
We use “my side” and “your side” so it’s always correct from any perspective.
I have no idea. Like others I usually request the side closest to the bathroom since I go during the night more often than her. I could see it either way.
Obviously the perspective of lying on the bed face-up. Though I may be biased because our bed is next to the window (feet side) so you can’t look at it form the foot of the bed – either from the side or behind our heads
No right or left.
Window side or door side.
If this doesn’t apply to your bed, then you have aligned the bed improperly.
In medicine you use the view of the examiner like your boyfriend. I don’t think that is reasonable for the people lying down though.
So using the point of the examiner, is the mattress the belly or back or the bed? I say it’s the belly, the baseboard would be the back. So it would be the same as laying in the bed.
I might have gotten things messed up because I am not a medical student. Apparently the swap happens only for MRI and similar things where the picture swaps the coronal plane.
If you want the explanation for it search for sagittal and coronal plane. It gives you a way of talking about bodies independent of rotation.
