Thursday, February 17, 2005

An Ode to My Bed (A Cautionary Tale)

When Jason and I first moved into our new apartment on Laurier, we had very little furniture to our names. The first few nights we slept on the wooden floors because what few sticks of furniture we had were still in another city. When we finally collected the things we had between us, one item was thankfully a bed. It was Jason’s, a purchase from his bachelor days up in le big city of Toronto. The frame was blonde wood, and he had a neutral duvet with blue Martha Stewart sheets on it. When I had slept in this bed previously, I didn’t think of it one way or another, but now that it was in my home, I felt it was a reflection of me, and a rather poor one.

I teased Jason about the Martha Stewart sheets rather mercilessly, but it’s not like I had a more appropriate set of linen in my hope chest or anything. When I had left my mother’s house to go live the dorm life at University (this lasted all of one month), I had purchased new bedding for myself, but the Winnie the Pooh motif that had looked cute and whimsical in my dorm not only seemed silly in a new apartment, but also way, way too small (beds in dorms are smaller than single, I swear, and here I was upgraded to a queen).
But we were busy buying other necessities at the time, such as a TV, a microwave, and lots of Crown Royal. Linen fell to the back of my mind.

But then one day, something happened to put the bed back into our frontal lobes. We were quietly reading in bed one Saturday afternoon (if you’re over 18, by reading I of course mean having vigorous girl-on-top sex), when we heard a terrifying CRRRRAAACCKKKK. Well, it couldn’t have been that terrifying, because we didn’t put down our books, we were really into them, so we shot each other looks but kept on reading away. Then, with a WHOOOOSH, we took a tumble. The wooden slats beneath us had given way, and the mattress (and us), caved into the hole. Even then we were still kind of reading a little, trying to quell our laughter, but eventually it became impossible. Limbs were distributed somewhat haphazardly, the sheets were suffocating us, and we were sucked into a hole that took several minutes to free ourselves from.

Surveying the damage, we quickly realized that the bed was totaled. It was the end of an era. Piece by piece, we delivered the broken bed to the dumpster out back. It was a sad day. We’d had a lot of good times in that bed…heck, that’s where we got engaged! We were back on the floor for a little bit, but at least this time we had our trusty mattress. Jason insists that this mattress is quite cheap and should be replaced, but I wouldn’t then and still won’t now, think of replacing it. It has my sweet spot. I try not to think of what other hanky-panky took place on it before I arrived on the scene.

When we could finally arrange for delivery, we got ourselves a new bed. It’s really nice, big and black and metal…plus, it disassembles easily for all the moving we do and has stood up to all the tests we’ve put it through (so far). And, through the miracles of bridal registries, I was able to get a really great bedding set for it, expensive and regal, just the way I like pretty much everything. Now my bed is luxurious. When I crawl into it at night, the sheets are always cool. I burrow in and never want to come out. It’s delicious. That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes think of the old bed and miss it, but there’s a lot to be said for breaking in a new bed, testing its limits, and making new memories. I think this bed and I (and Jason) will be just fine.

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