'Tis the season to be merry: If you want peace on earth, especially at home, Leah McLaren, in “Why online should be off limits in the bedroom,” published in Saturday's Globe & Mail, makes a good case for unplugging the wireless over the holidays. She writes (in part):

There is a new gender war brewing in the salty trenches of heterosexual relations, and it centres, as so many skirmishes do, on the bedroom.

It's about men who bring their laptops into bed with them. And I don't mean once in a while, to Google up a bit of porn or do a lick of work while convalescing with a life-threatening illness (both of which are obviously perfectly reasonable reasons to bring a computer to bed).

I mean men who use their laptops whenever they are in bed, provided they are not sleeping or having sex . . . or dead. From the moment they put on their jammies and snuggle up at night, and then again in the morning with the first eyelid's flicker, the laptop is there. Bluish screen a-glow, battery a-purr, the tippity-tap of the keyboard sounding out a grim, Morse-code lullaby, entitled The Death of Pillow Talk.

It's welcome news for men, of course. I know it's rude to generalize and probably bad for my relationship too, but what the hell. Men -- whether they admit it or not -- avoid pillow talk. The reason is simple: While snuggling and giggling and chatting in bed often leads to sex, more often than not, it also leads to more in-depth talk. And more in-depth talk leads to serious talk, which quickly gets converted into serious plans, which leads to making choices, which leads to not choosing other things, which leads to a feeling of vague, unshakable entrapment, which leads to misery, which leads to death.

So as any rational, emotionally actualized contemporary male knows, it is therefore a perfectly reasonable and acceptable practice to bring an electronic digital communication device into bed with you, right?

Okay now, seriously. We need to talk about this. Not just me and my (admittedly technologically addicted) bed companion. We all collectively need to put our computers down and have a Serious Talk. I know, it's stuff like this that drove you to cling to your laptop, your hot, rectangular teddy bear, in the first place, but hear me out.

I'm not sure exactly when or why reading e-mail, watching video clips, checking sports statistics, downloading pirated music or, in the case of one female friend's nerdy husband, downloading 30-page essays on Spinoza at 4 in the morning, became normal bed practice, but it's got to stop.

I offer no defense for my gender-mates, but merely point out that this malady certainly is not limited to heterosexual couples. It afflicts same-sex couples too, and polygamists. Frankly, there are times when, alone in bed, I resent my own use of the computer. If not pillow talk, at least sleep deserves equal consideration!

(Photo by Zela, on Stock.Xchng)