I'm currently looking for a bed. This isn't to say I don't have one already. It's not like I'm sleeping on the floor or anything. But my current mattress is, well, let's just say that if I keep using it for any significant amount of time, the local chiropractors are going to be able to afford new yachts and golf club memberships.
Maybe the floor wouldn't be a bad idea after all. There are monks of certain religious orders who sleep quite comfortably on stone benches in their cramped, drafty rooms in their mountaintop monasteries. A floor is surely better than that.
But there are critters down there on the hardwood: the infrequent spider that hasn't been exterminated with extreme prejudice, possibly a mouse or two, and lots and lots of dust bunnies (they have big teeth, you know). I don't mind having bugs and related vermin crawling on me when I'm camping, and my cousin has told some fun-filled tales of the flea-infested straw beds he came across while hiking up to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, but when I'm trying to get a solid eight to fifteen hours of sleep at home, I'd just as soon not wake up with a spider staring me down and demanding my wallet and to know where I keep the good silver.
Now that I've started looking for a new mattress, I keep noticing all the commercials on t.v. plugging particular brands and types. There's the Sleep Number bed, which has the benefit of allowing you to adjust both sides of the bed separately so that you and your significant other (or Doberman Pinscher) can each get the perfect firmness or fluffiness that's right for you. A big drawback is that the spokesperson for the brand, Lindsay Wagner (who played the Bionic Woman on t.v. back in the 70s), looks like she hasn't gotten a decent night's sleep for somewhere going on thirty years (probably back when she didn't have to do t.v. commercials to get a paycheck).
The other drawback to the Sleep Number bed is that I tend to sleep diagonally. I don't know why this is, so don't ask, but if I had both sides of my Sleep Number mattress set to different levels of firmness, I think that would be, well, awkward. And if I set them to the same level, well, what's the point? Might as well just get a featherbed.
The other top-o'-the-line mattress is the Tempur-Pedic. Made of so-called "memory foam," the Tempur-Pedic conforms to the shape of your body, snuggling you in all cozy and comfortable-like for a dreamy nineteen or twenty hours of sleep per night. I flopped down on one of these at a local mattress outlet store and discovered the following. Yes, it conforms to your body. Yes, it's very comfortable. And yes, it really does feel like it's made out of the same stuff they made Stretch Armstrong ("Stretch Him Long, Stretch Him Thin, Watch Him Return to Shape Again!") dolls out of back in the late 70s (the same time that Lindsay Wagner was playing the Bionic Woman. I'm starting to sense a pattern). Of course, Stretch Armstrong got his stretchy goodness from corn syrup; the Tempur-Pedic gets its from magic -- so they're really nothing alike.
If I decide to forego the technologically wacky mattresses like the Sleep Number and the Tempur-Pedic, I won't be limiting myself. There are still warehouses full of Sealys, Sertas, Simmonses, and a bunch of other brand name mattresses that start with an "S" (I'm guessing mattress manufactures have "S" names to make you think of "sleep," which, I'm told, also starts with the letter "S").
Or maybe I'll see if any of the local mountaintop monasteries are having a yard sale. I bet I could pick up a stone bench for cheap.
If you'd like to find out more about Stretch Armstrong and even see the original t.v. commercial, go to www.plaidstallions.com/kenner/stretcharmstrong.html on the web. If you'd like to share your own mattress hunting stories, please do.
