1. Pick up a clean, dry item of clothing from your washing basket. Push down the existential dread as you realize that what you thought was a basketful of shirts is actually just one fitted sheet.
  2. Take a moment and steady your breathing. Declare out loud, “I’m an emotionally stable, financially independent, and physically semi-flexible adult. Linens won’t defeat me—this time.”
  3. Take another moment and close your eyes. Visualize the sensations of sliding into a freshly made bed, as if you were snuggling into the cocoon of the Mulberry silkworm that wove your sheets and that, in the morning, you’ll awake as a beautiful butterfly.
  4. Open your eyes. Turn the sheet so that the elastic edge faces you. Do not look directly at it, lest it sense your anxiety. Remember, it’s more scared of you than you are of it.
  5. Gather the longer edges into the shorter edges with the precision of a plastic surgeon performing a tummy tuck.
  6. Say out loud, “Wait. Is this right?!” with the imprecision of a plastic surgeon who confused their patient’s tummy’s longer edges and shorter edges and instead of giving them a six pack, gave them the resemblance of a sleeping bag that has been hurriedly and only half successfully shoved back into its carry sack.
  7. Turn the sheet 90 degrees to the right and hold it in place for six and a half seconds. Then, turn the sheet back 90 degrees to the left and hold it in place for the time it takes to tally the thread count.
  8. Swivel the sheet 45 degrees inside out, diagonally upside down, then 1080 degrees front to back until all sides are of equal length and equidistant from your baffled face.
  9. Fold the sheet in half, tie it in thirds, bundle it end over end, and unfurl it by four-fifths and a quarter until it resembles the Mayflower's mizzenmast.
  10. Place the mizzenmast inside your washing basket, hop in, and set sail for the New World of folded sheets.
  11. Drop anchor and wade ashore.
  12. Roll out the side of the sheet that most resembles an orthogonal triangle and calculate the hypotenuse.
  13. Drape the sheet over one shoulder, tie two corners around your waist, and in tribute to Pythagoras, fashion a toga.
  14. Thrust your hands inside the top corner folds as you would shove them into your toga if you were debating in the ecclesia and had just lost an argument about what constitutes a hospital corner.
  15. Keep your hands in the corner folds and lay the sheet on the floor. Take off your left shoe and roll up your right pant leg. Place your left foot on the topmost bottom corner. Place your right elbow inside the second diagonally opposite curve. Kneel on the remaining three angles with your middle knee. Pick up the intersection of the upper and lower easternmost quadrants of the fifth angle of the rectangle with your central incisors.
  16. Stop drooling on the sheet.
  17. Rotate the sheet simultaneously latitudinally and longitudinally along the mid-axis until it is at a right angle to the equator and can be used to calculate Greenwich Mean Time.
  18. Drape the junction that is at the highest sea level between your latissimus dorsi and rectus abdominis, and then crimp it into your axilla that is pointing in the direction of your hometown, and proudly sing your high school alma mater song.
  19. Stretch the corners as far as possible until you look like a disproportionate and distressed Vitruvian Man.
  20. Maintain your half-kneeling-quarter-squating-quasi-reclined position, gather the twisted central apex between the two smallest toes of your largest foot, and fold the sheet into an origami crane that is in a dispute with an origami swan about who looks more like an origami lotus flower.
  21. Roll backward into a reverse 4.5 somersault in the pike position, blow the sheet into the air with the flap-flap-flap of your triceps, place the midline of your body in alignment with Ursa Major, whisper “Hush little baby, don’t you cry,” and let the folded fitted sheet glide into your closet.
  22. Notice that your bed needs to be made.