A New Bedmate
The Source
I once had a cousin who tended to get married whenever the seasons changed. At least she changed men that often whether she married them or not. If she ever showed up to two consecutive family gatherings with the same guy we assumed she’d either been distracted or ill. I was very young when my aunt was alive and fooling around, but I remember her sitting on a log beside a stream at Siloam Springs State Park and saying, "I just got a new mattress. It's a lot easier to get used to a new man." I've now had several nights’ experience with my new bed and mattress, both designed to keep my head at a breathable 30-degree angle. I didn't want to jump to any conclusion until I'd spent a few evenings with my new friend. Several things have become obvious. . --- I have paid much less for a car than I had to shell out for even a rather common mattress. When it arrived I checked it for weight since I assumed at that price that it had gold bars in the springs. ---This is bed is bigger. All my life I've slept in a double bed and this one is a Queen size. I look over my shoulder each night and see all that extra acreage behind me and wonder how I'm supposed to fill it. Fuzzy Teddy Bears? Decorative, tatted pillows? A small garden? A group of runaway nuns? Some of these ideas are impractical and a couple would wear me out so I've left this pasture of white behind me empty. Perhaps I could rent it out. ----This bed is taller. Not a little taller, a big taller. It's a "when you sit on the edge of the bed your feet don't reach the floor" taller. It's an "I can now see the top of my dresser and part of Missouri" taller. Okay, I'm a pretty agile guy, but after all I've just been through major surgery and am still fearful of straining something if I stretch my innards too far. A friend suggested I buy a small step stool, but the thought of the thing puts me in mind of the tiny king Farquaad in the Shrek movies. So instead of an embarrassing stool I sort of attack the lofty mattress as if I was getting onto a horse. . . without the benefit of stirrups. I will never do this if someone else is watching. My brother has suggested a small trampoline but I have visions of myself over-stomping and ending up against the far wall. ---The opposite side of the bed height coin is the prospect of getting out off my perch. The worst mistake I've made in this respect happened on the one morning that I somehow forgot that I had a new and higher mattress, swung my feet out to find the floor, and finding none kept sliding downwards. I stopped before I dumped my entire torso onto the floor, but it was enough of a scare to put me on notice for the next few days. On the day the bed arrived God sent me a wonderful gift in the form of a friend named Judy who literally walked in the back door as two guys were toting my new mattress through the front door. I am competent at almost no household task and fixing up a bed for the first time isn't even on my list of possible adventures. Judy patiently showed me how to position the pad, raise the head of the bed to make putting on the fitted sheet easier, finding the fitted sheets top and telling it from the bottom, demonstrated a way of folding my upper sheet to make square, hotel-room corners, a task which I'll never be able to master, and how to install a tight pillow case. Truly a gift from God. I'd still be struggling with fabric had Judy not stopped by. But while she was there she moved the furniture away from the left side of the bed. How come? She was afraid that my bed was so high that I might come tumbling out of it some morning and smash my head through a chair. One wise lady. ---The thing does encompass my frame. This is polite language for saying it tends to capture me like one of those sea creatures that sit there disguising itself as a rock until an unsuspecting fish wanders by and gets sucked into the predator’s belly. I purposely bought an uber-soft bed so when I collapse into it, it tends to melt around me and if I want to turn right or left I first dig myself out of the mattress hole. The trick is to go to bed at night in the same position in which you’d like to wake up. I’ve thought about taking a breathing hose to bed with me in case some night I sink too low and can’t crawl out. ---People who study such things say that the average America has six beds in his or her lifetime, counting the little cradles and bassinettes of our babyhood. I think this is number four for me. I don’t give up a well-trained mattress without a fight but I guess they all beat the heck out of a marble slab.