Today was a red letter day* in our household. For the first time in almost 25 years, we will be slumbering, perchancing to dream, on a new mattress.
I doubt that anyone likes to shop for a new mattress. It’s a very personal item, something that you’ll likely live with for years, if not decades, and yet you really can’t give it a good test drive, at least not without violating several municipal and state ordinances.
To complicate matters, “sleep technology” has apparently made quantum leaps since the early 80s. You now can choose from numbering systems, body-molding foam and air mattresses that cost more than my first car.
We eschewed the high-tech approach and settled for a nice “‘modified pillowtop” model (another advance, but this one seems to have some merit). However, we still failed to anticipate one “advance,” which is that mattresses are now thicker than Anna Nicole’s thighs (the pre-TrimSpa Anna, that is). The result is that our bed is now only slightly shorter than Shaq. I’m not kidding; I’m afraid to turn on the ceiling fan now for fear that I’ll forget and sit up in bed instead of crawling out over the side like a gecko. Seriously, I get vertigo looking down at my alarm clock on the nightstand.
We had another little surprise, but this one is entirely our fault. We had forgotten that our previous mattress set was a “California King,” which is apparently four inches longer than a, um, “Rest of the Lower 48 King.” We don’t really need an 84″ long mattress, but we now have a rather large gap at the foot of the bed (yeah, we could have shoved the mattress down to the foot, but having that same gap at the head would be like sleeping on the edge of the Grand Canyon, ifyouknowwhatimean. The echoes alone would keep me up.). We decided that we can learn to live with it. As expensive as this one is, I can’t imagine having to buy a California version, what with all the pollution controls and stuff that comes with it. Fortunately, I’m getting shorter as I age, so I’ve got that going for me.
Despite all of that, I’m looking forward to our first night on the new mattress. I’ll sleep just fine, because I’ll be exhausted by the climb.
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*Do you know the origin of the term “red letter day”? I always thought it had some kind of arcane metaphysical existential meaning, but it turns out that it just refers to an old calendar on which special days – holidays or holy days – were marked in red.
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Man, ain’t that the truth about how big beds are? I was a single man for many years, and of course, I basically slept on some plywood with a bit of padding that rested on, like, bricks or something. When my wife and I merged households, I was frightened by the height of her bed.
There’s just no sitting up and putting your feet on the floor anymore — something I think has contributed to the decline of American society. You don’t get that brief chance to center yourself by sitting there half-in, half-out of bed and contemplate the day before you. It’s all or nothing these days.