Point: This Blanket

Your aunt gave you this blanket. Your aunt who has lived in North Carolina and Southern California, who understands and appreciates just the right amount of warmth.

It is a smaller blanket. Tuck it under your feet, and it pulls up to your chest. It’s not a blanket that ends the day, but a blanket that toasts it. Getting up out of it is no trouble, and it is easily manipulated by a single person.

This blanket is on the side of the sectional couch orthogonal to the plane of the TV, so you can lean back into the intersectional pillows and face the TV full-on. Your feet will be warm, but your shoulders, neck and head will be propped to attention, perfectly positioned to engage with the education, entertainment, or, even, edutainment that might appear onscreen.

This blanket is super solid. It keeps the cold parts of you warm and the warm parts of you cool. You can lie with it, sit with it,  or drape it behind you in equal measure. It is a great couch blanket that is ideal for a semi-active relaxation session.

Counterpoint: The Other Blanket

Your aunt gave you the other blanket. Your aunt who lives in New Hampshire, who understands the cold, and who knows no blanket in its duty to its shivering human shall give the chill any mercy whatever.

Your aunt knitted the other blanket herself. It has both yours and your wife’s names woven into it. It is red, white and blue because that’s what you asked for.

The other blanket is enormous. It is not easily moved by one person, wound up in the snarl of whoever cuddled in it last. The other blanket will swallow you whole. You will nest yourself in the other blanket from under your heels up to the juncture of your neck and jawline and you will pass out for two hours regardless of what’s on the TV, though it is probably Ken Burns’s The Roosevelts.

The other blanket is a bazooka of cozy. It is not to be underestimated. It is not to be trifled with.

Like a St. Bernard dumping a barrel of brandy down your throat, it is here to rescue you, not to ask you whether you want to be rescued.

With the other blanket, the decision is already made. And if you tried the other blanket, you are already unconscious.