When I was seventeen and angsty in the way only a suburban Ohioan hopped up on Ayn Rand and scholarship essays can be, I told my mother that I felt defeated, every single day--same material, same classmates, same homework, same self-referential poem, same bed in the same position--that by the time I tucked my understimulated self in every night, I felt the bitter inertia of my existence. And Mom said, "Well, why don't you sleep on the couch?"

That worked.