It started with a trip to Sleepy’s. In reality, it started many years ago when Alisa told me that her ideal bed would be one that we built ourselves. After a trip to home depot, some 4×8 sheets of plywood and some 4×4 fence posts for legs, we had our bed. Alisa’s mom made a custom-sized mattress for us, and our dream of a home-made bed was realized.
I’ve always teased Alisa about her being the Princess in the Princess and the Pea story, but by our third month of pregnancy, we were living that story every night. The home made bed just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Alisa demanded a new mattress. A mattress fit for a queen. A trip to Sleepy’s was planned.
The thing about Sleepy’s is that you are encouraged to ‘try out’ the mattresses in the store - if by trying out, you mean lying on a mattress in broad daylight, in your clothes and shoes, with strangers watching you, while making judgment calls on firmness, responsiveness, and plushness - things that perhaps you’ve never even considered before. But you better start considering them, because you’re going to be spending a lot of money on a purchase that you’re going to have in your home for a LONG time. First we were encouraged to try the $6000.00 mattress with the lifetime warranty. 6 Grand. It was…nice. What else could I say? I had no vocabulary at my disposal for anything other than ‘It’s nice’. Alisa liked it too. But maybe they had something more in my size, and by my size I mean cheaper. The $5000.00 model. With pillowtop. Hand sewn. Maybe a little cheaper? The $4000.00 model. All natural fibers and a twenty year warranty on uneven wear. The $3000.00 model? Natural and man-made blend - equal degrees plush and firm, Alisa needs plush. I need my 4×8 sheet of plywood. $2000.00 model. Twenty year warranty with natural and man made fibers - a little more firm, yet a slightly higher ’sink’ factor. The $1000.00 model, no box spring. We dragged the mattress off of it’s box spring to better test it out in real world conditions, ie, what it would be like on our 4×8 sheet of plywood bed. More firm than plush, ten year warranty, queen size, natural and man made fibers, sewn by the hands of immigrant workers in North Carolina. Sold and financed. Oh, the warranty time period is cut in half if you don’t buy the box spring? So be it. The sweat stain guarantee is void if you don’t buy the $100 mattress protector? You got me. Alisa’s mom was in town that night with her truck - can we just have her swing by and pick this baby up? Mattresses are only shipped from the warehouse in Long Island and are delivered for a fee of $80.00 - plus and additional $10.00 per floor, per item delivered. Can we at least walk out of here with the mattress cover? No. Nothing is ’sold’ from Sleepy’s - the mattress cover will be an additional item delivered from the Long Island warehouse and carried up the 4 flights of stairs. Done deal.
Financing. That’s right, I’m writing this entry while lying in a bed I don’t even own. Quite a concept for me. Why should I not own the bed I sleep in? Apparently it fits in somehow with how Sleepy’s stays in business. LIfe is short. Perhaps after agreeing to spend thousands of dollars on a mattress, most consumers accept the bet that they’ll be dead in a year, and will have made no payments or interest charges, and have ended up getting the better of Sleepy’s by sleeping and eventually dying in a bed that they’ve never even paid for. Somehow, this must not be what happens in reality. After a year, serious interest charges ensue, and I’m sure folks are paying off their mattress purchases long after the sweat stains and uneven wear have customized their beds into the most comfortable mattress in the world. “For the rest of your life…”