The King is Dead, Long Live the Queen

The old King. I had to stand outside the bedroom to take this photo.

When I was a kid I slept on a bunk bed mattress. It was thin without much padding, it sat on a wire mesh frame, and it smelled like pee. So when I got older and was living on my own, just about anything a bit better than that felt luxurious. An old mattress on the floor of a hippie commune, a fold out sofa bed, a cheap mattress bought from a sketchy furniture store. I've slept on them all. The last mattress I bought, Mark found through Groupon. We had just bought a king sized bed and needed a king sized mattress. So Mark started researching and found the Groupon offer. I believe we paid around seven hundred dollars for that mattress, which I considered a lot of money. Now, exactly six years later, I am really paying the price. The thing sags in the middle, springs poke at my back all night, and I wake up every morning feeling like a mule kicked me. I haven't been getting any decent sleep for nearly a year. So I insisted that we get another new bed, and I insisted that we go back to queen size. In Florida the king sized bed made sense. We had a gigantic master bedroom, so having an acre of bed fit. Here in this one hundred year old Chicago house we needed to grease the doorway just to get that bed into the bedroom. Seriously, there is barely enough room for me to get around the thing. I have to sidle all the way. Yesterday I went to Macy's mattress department and asked the salesman to point me towards the firm mattresses. I laid down on the first one he showed me. I was in heaven, I nearly fell asleep right then and there. I laid there looking across towards the side of the bed that Mark would be sleeping on. He would be awfully close and I wondered if I could deal with him and his 'Restless Leg Syndrome'. (Oh yes, that's a real thing, and Mark goes to town with that leg most nights.) Anyway, I loved the mattress, then I looked at the price. I nearly shit my pants. I have never in my life paid two thousand dollars for a bed. That was the mattress, box springs, and queen sized bed frame. Two grand, on sale. I thought about that morning pain again and told the salesman, "I'll take it." So at sixty eight years old I have finally got myself a real adult bed. I better sleep like a baby or that thing goes back. But not like when I was a baby, because I don't want it to smell like pee.