Planes, Trains, Trucks Bed Skirt (Twin)

Bed Skirt

Bed skirt! That’s what some people call me. What a name! The other bedroom furniture and boys bedding in your room have interesting names like comforter and bedset or wall clock, but because I go around the base of your bed, they’ve given me the name of kid’s bed skirt. I ask you? Why would someone give such a name to someone who has seen so much danger?

Instead of kid’s bed skirt, I prefer to think of myself as a tunnel shield especially if your bed has enough space below it for you to slide your cars and trucks under the bed to the other side. Some kids like to tuck a part of me up and under the mattress on the bed. This makes an opening like the opening to a tunnel. When you do this on both sides, you can push your small toys quite hard and aim them to come out the tunnel at the other side of your bed. Of course, when you have finished playing tunnels you should un-tuck me from under your mattress otherwise there will be creases in me that will make your mom grumble.

Before you push anything under your bed, first hold it next to your bed at the opening of the tunnel. If the top of the toy is too close to the top of the opening, don’t go pushing it under your bed. It will probably stick there and you won’t be able to get it out unless you call for one of your parents to help.

Tunnels are very important things. Some clever people called engineers worked out that they could get through a large thing blocking the way by digging a tunnel under, around, or through the blockage. That’s how I came about. Now, I have cousins who are tunnels under rivers, under short sections of the sea, and through big mountains. It takes a lot of time, money and equipment to make a tunnel. You have to make a hole through a very dangerous space, whether it’s through hard rock or under water.

We tunnels are used by trains, cars and trucks. When people build a tunnel they use construction equipment and tractors. When you get older you might hear about the Big Bang Theory of how the universe was made. But every tunnel begins with a big bang. Engineers carefully place explosives and then trigger them. The strong force of the explosive chips away hard rock. Engineers can then move in with drilling equipment to drill the holes deeper. They use tractors to scoop out the loose rock as the hole starts turning into the beginning of a tunnel.

The engineers cover the walls of the tunnel with concrete to make it strong and smooth. It takes many mixer truck trips to complete a long tunnel. Once the tunnel is complete, other engineers called safety engineers check that the tunnels walls are strong and will not crack. Before cars, trains, trucks and busses are allowed to go through a tunnel, the safety engineers have to make sure that the walls will not collapse and crush the people in the tunnel.

Do you think you would like to be an engineer one day? Get started now. Turn your bedskirt into a tunnel under your bed. And, by the way, when people ask you what I am, please don’t tell them I’m a “bedskirt.” Tell them I am a “tunnel shield.”