We’ve all seen them, late at night while we’re munching on our third snack sized bag of flaming hot cheetos [i prefer my flaming hot cheetos ‘with lime’, but to ask for something so exotic would be unheard of at the liquor store on my block], the commercial sandwiched between your ‘news at ten’ and the simpsons rerun that you have seen about a hundred times too many. The advertisement trying to sell you this bed that was created for astronauts so they could sleep more comfortably in space! I sit there on the couch i’ve had for years now that was salvaged from some unsuspecting neighbor late at night, destined for some landfill, listening intently to their pitch:
“do you suffer from back pain?”
‘Yeah! I do!’ I exclaim as i’m hunched over my laptop stacked on top of a pile of magazines on my coffee table. My posture is terrible as a lifestyle choice. It always seems to be too difficult to consciously sit upright in the fashion that is suggested by those chairs the schools always petitioned for in elementary school. [note to self, get one of those chairs]
“do you toss and turn at night just trying to get comfortable?”
‘of course!’ I mean, i prefer to sleep on my right side, but my arm eventually loses feeling and i’m forced to roll over in hopes of regaining any sort of feeling besides that weird cold numb one that always comes right before the shooting pain sets in while you’re rediscovering movement in your phantom limb. I can’t seem to get to sleep on my back, but sometimes that’s the only option, and i guess my second favorite is flat on my stomach – but my lifelong fear of dying in my sleep ever since hearing about SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome, that thing that doctors thought was happening because babies were sleeping on their stomachs] forces me back onto my back, where i can only imagine being a young pharoh jammed into some sort of jewel encrusted sarcophagus after my guts were pulled out through my nose and stuffed into tiny jars and…..yeah…so that’s why i don’t get a lot of sleep
“have you ever wanted to drink wine on your bed while girls in silk pajamas jump on it?”
‘Fuck yeah i have!’
Then you need this mattress!
Ok, so i sleep on an air mattress, and have for some time. I haven’t always slept on an air mattress, I consider it an upgrade from the shitty eighty dollar Wal-Mart futon i was sleeping on before. You know, the one that folds up on you while you’re sleeping on it, and refuses to fold up when you need to use it as a couch. The thick black tubular steel forcing it’s way through the thin rats nest of a mattress straight into your spine. And before that, a different air mattress.
My air mattress is actually a really nice one, not your typical velour covered camping mattress, this is a double story, queen sized, contoured air mattress with a pump built in!
While watching the commercial, I was curious as to how my mattress stacks up to those that I see on television. So let’s see how it did.
‘The girl jumping on the bed with a wine glass test’
FAILED
This didn’t work. In fact, it didn’t work in the way that i couldn’t even get the wine glass to stand up properly on my bed in the first place! I spilled it way before i could convince a girl to come over to my house and jump on my bed fully clothed, let alone wearing silk pajamas!
‘The drop the bowling ball on the bed test’
FAILED
Surprisingly, it was more difficult to find the bowling ball than it was to find a girl. So technically I failed this test, not the bed, but i was able to throw a full bag of cat food on to simulate the bowling ball, and i ended up with very similar results as the previous wine glass test.
‘The memory foam hugs your contours test’
PASSED
Memory foam, supposedly, hugs your body contours in order to support every bit in the most proper way in order to provide you with the best nights sleep. Sometimes after a long weekend my mattress becomes severely deflated, and i’ll wake up fully engulfed by vinyl, bed sheets and sweat. I don’t know how good it is for my spine, i haven’t seen any graphics supporting my claims, but i have heard elevating your legs above your head and lying on the floor are both great practices, and are known to improve circulation. So, consider my claim supported.
‘Developed by NASA’
umm….passed?
Apparently back in 1966 NASA developed visco-elastic polyurethane foam in order to improve the safety of aircraft cushions. There is nothing i’ve found in my research to imply that NASA invented the air mattress….but i’m pretty sure it took a pretty smart scientist to sew two chambered air mattresses together with an electric pump pre-installed, offering both an ‘inflate’ and ‘deflate’ option, in addition to an ‘adjust’ button which, to my knowledge, is exactly the same as the ‘deflate’ button only ‘less’.
‘Can be used as a flotation device in case of emergency’
PASSED
On many occasions I have been lounging out by the pool and noticed way too many children screaming for ‘Help’. One tiny buoyant ring just isn’t going to cut it with the popularity of near drownings in this day and age. My mattress can most definitely be tossed at a child in distress, and just as long as the kid isn’t smothered by the immensity of my elevated queen size, he or she should be able to belly up onto the island and lounge their way to a nice golden tan. Try THAT with your Sealy posture-pedic!
So there you go. If you find yourself confused as to whether or not you are sleeping on a piece of modern technology, or just some crummy old pillow top, check out my guide and you’ll know for sure.
Let me know of any other tests you can think of to perform on my mattress!
and just for fun
