MATTRESS SHOPPING + BABY BOOMER = MARRIAGE COUNSELING

Go mattress shopping and expect to find more than a mattress.

Like what?

The outstanding feature to me is meeting people who quote $20,000 for a new bed.

Sound normal to you? Not to me, and here’s why:

Like many baby boomers, I’ve slept in a variety of beds, some better than others.

My first ‘big-boy’ bed came when my parents noticed their kids growing out of whatever old mattress came from the bunkbeds.

We got long beds our feet didn’t hang over.

Oh yeah, it was nice stretching out on that one.

Next came a dorm mattress, which took me back to the bunkbed feeling.

After summer back home in my old bed which was barely broken in, I joined the Army, and you know what that means.

The entire company in boot camp assembled in front of the barracks before hustling inside to the assigned floors.

The big sleeping porch, the bay, had a row of bunkbeds on either side of a room with a gleaming strip of floor in between that no one in their right mind would ever set foot on.

Except the Drill Sergeants.

My first bunk-mate on the top bed apologized ahead of time for being a bed-wetter.

That was his way of breaking the ice.

My last top bunk guy hated white guys and let me know each night after lights out.

I think I turned him around with charm and humor.

 

Me: You’re not a bed wetter, are you?

Briscoe: You asking me what? Hell, no. What are you asking that for?

Me: There’s a guy on the other side who is a bed wetter in case you’re interested.

Briscoe: That’s some kind of fucked up shit.

Me: So is your bullshit about hating white guys. Get to know me first, then tell me you hate me.

Briscoe: I don’t need to.

Me: What you don’t need is someone peeing the bed above you. Other than that, we’re good.

Briscoe: We good, huh?

Me: We’d be the best bunk in the building if I bunked alone, but you’re dragging us down.

Briscoe: It’s my fault now?

Me: It is until you get better shit talk. Or shut up. You can’t cut my throat in my sleep three nights in a row.

 

We all arrived in the barracks to mattresses folded in half on each bed with a stack of sheets and blankets on top.

We turned them into made beds you could bounce a quarter off of.

Briscoe and I had the best bunks in the house.

 

This Ain’t The Army

Saleslady in a mattress store: The bed you tested, along with the frame and headboard, will be $22,000.

Wife:

Me: Thank you. We’ll keep looking.

 

Who buys a bed for $20,000?

The same guy who pays $50,000 to replace a French door to their deck.

When I heard that quote the first thing I thought of was the cost of plywood. I’d board up the door opening and cut holes for windows before paying that much.

Conversely, if I bought a bed for $20K I’d never get a good night’s sleep.

 

With so many choices in mattresses shopping, where does it end?

 

 

 

 

Eventually you have to decide. Do it before you’re worn down and blinded by the variety.

 

Marriage Counseling Mattress

A man and wife walk into the mattress store.

The man is aloof, saying he’s there because of his dainty wife and her delicate preferences.

Man: I could sleep in a ditch with my shoes for a pillow.

 

Through the process of mattress shopping the man showed his true colors:

 

But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.

On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.

“Oh, very badly!” said she. “I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It’s horrible!”

Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds.

Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that.

 

The man did a version of Princess and Pea, and he was the princess.

 

The Final Verdict

One bed has zero gravity; another has none.

That bed is organically sourced; this bed is made from latex.

One bed has sound massage; another has a shaker.

That bed has temperature control; this bed splits in half.

One bed is a hybrid; another is a bag of air.

 

Woman: We want a California King with a split.

Man: That’s two beds pushed together. After that it’s separate rooms, separate floors, and eventually separate houses.

Woman: What’s that supposed to mean?

Man: We’re not looking for a hospital bed, an assisted living bed, or a bed so tricked out we’d never have to get up, or want to.

Woman: You sound so negative.

Man: After today you can strap me into that electric chair and give me the juice.

Woman: It’s a massage chair like they have in nail salons. You like those.

Man: If I see another mattress sample of foam and fabric designed for the best night’s sleep of my life I’m sticking a fork in an outlet.

Woman: Don’t do that.

 

PS:

The time and money to find the right mattress will be rewarded by a future of deep, deep, sleep, deeper than you’ve ever had.

 

PSS: 

Sticking a fork in a socket might kill you. They are not the same thing.