Culture

Beds, Dreams, and the Price Tag of Slumber

Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).



Ah, the quest for the perfect bed, a journey that rivals the pursuit of the Holy Grail. It’s an odyssey through the land of mattresses, where comfort is king, and the price tag is the gatekeeper to the realm of restful slumber.

Let’s take a trip down the memory foam lane, where my most expensive personal purchase (excluding homes and cars) is not a dazzling piece of jewelry or a fancy gadget. No, it’s the humble yet regal bed, the throne of dreams and the sanctuary of sleep.

Twice in my life, I’ve embarked on the noble quest for the ultimate bed. These weren’t just purchases; they were sagas, tales of tossing and turning, of Goldilocks moments seeking the one that’s just right. Amazing how much thought goes into choosing a bed, considering it’s the place where we retreat from the chaos of the world.

Yet, in the grand tapestry of life, I confess to a year-long dalliance with a king-sized air mattress. Oh, the scandal! But hear me out – life was in transition, roots were in flux, and the air mattress became a whimsical emblem of transitory existence. It wasn’t just a bed; it was a statement—a declaration that life’s temporariness could be as comfortable as a well-inflated mattress.

Beds are paradoxes, aren’t they? We splurge on them, creating an entire industry dedicated to crafting the perfect cocoon of slumber. Bed stores dot the landscape like oases, and television commercials lure us with promises of sleep-induced utopia. Yet, in the grand theater of life, sleep takes the backseat.

We toil away at work, chase dreams, and rush through the maze of responsibilities only to collapse onto a couch when we get home. The bed, the pricey haven we invested in, becomes a distant mirage, often overlooked in the hustle and bustle.

It’s a curious dance, this tango with sleep. We spend a fortune on a mattress that cradles us into dreamland, yet we skimp on the time spent under its embrace. The irony is as thick as a memory foam mattress, and the metaphor is as fluffy as a down pillow.

So, there you have it – my most expensive personal purchase, a bed that’s witnessed dreams, nightmares, and the occasional late-night snack. A throne for the nocturnal adventures we all embark on, often oblivious to the grandeur of the bed that cradles our weary souls. Sleep may be a pricey affair, but oh, the stories it weaves in the silent hours of the night.

4 replies »

  1. i’ll Admit it Usually
    i Am Truly A Cheap
    Skate Dance And
    Song is Practically
    Free So i Indulge
    All the Way
    Floating on Terrestrial
    Smooth Store Floors
    And on Page as Well
    Yet True back in 1995
    Just 8 Short Months After
    Purchasing an Oldest HP
    Windows Computer
    For 800 Bucks
    i Moved Up to
    A Quantex Computer/
    Monitor/Printer Package for 4,000 Bucks
    Really Sounds Crazy Then and Particularly
    Now as We Only Spent 3,000 Dollars For the
    Down
    Payment
    For Our Home
    And that was the
    Price of the Used
    Car i Purchased
    Previous to the one i Owned Then
    A Guy At Work Said What in the World
    Are you Gonna Do with 32 MB of Ram hehe
    And That Speedy Still 14.4K Modem of Course
    Ever Since Then i’ve Been Racing Technology
    Remembering that First Work Computer in 1992
    The Autodidact Ability to eventually Reach the
    Golden Handcuffs of Retirement Benefits
    Oh Dear
    Lord how
    That Investment
    Then has Paid-off
    The Only Thing That Kept
    me in a Job in Reduction of
    Forces Information Technology
    A Double Edged Sword Machine and Human
    That Computer A Relic Still Sits in a Tupperware
    Tub in an Aging No Longer Used Shed With the
    Rest of the
    History
    of the Machine
    i Became And
    The Machines i Left…
    How Amazing What
    A Smart Phone Will
    Do Now For 25 to 30 Bucks
    A Month With No Interest on the Loan
    Cheap Electronic Technology Dear Miriam Less than
    Two Jars of Fancy Nuts A Month at Walmart Hehe…
    We Either Eat the Machine or the Machine Eats Us
    Can’t
    Eat It Yet
    Vacations
    From it Do Come..:)

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  2. In real money terms, probably $500 for a camera with accessories, around 1972. It was an inheritance from my grandmother. I shudder to think how that works out in 2023 terms from inflation.

    It is rare for me to buy a big ticket item other than an auto or auto repairs. Sometimes I’d buy nice clothes but that was 30 years ago.

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  3. My wife and I just upgraded to a king size mattress……I have this theory that the longer people are married the bigger the mattress gets. She likes it but I’m still getting used to it. I can no longer reach across the bed and put my hand on her in the middle of the night…..alas she doesn’t mind

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  4. We switched to a California King mattress some years ago to accommodate our two vizslas, one of which liked to sleep right up next to us and the other of which like to sleep at the foot of the bed between my feet. Both of them under the covers, of course, because vizslas …

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