There comes a time in every man’s life when he finds himself faced with the prospect of having to buy a new bed. Maybe he neglected to buy one of those really fancy mattresses that can balance a glass of red wine without spilling it, maybe he wasn’t paying attention in kindergarten when all of his classmates were incessantly singing that charming, little anecdote about monkeys jumping on the bed, despite the clear warnings that the doctor repeatedly inferred throughout the entire song…
Or maybe he was actually pretty boring and just wore it out the old-fashioned way through sleep, wild sex, and the occasional late-night pillow fight. Granted, it probably wasn’t necessarily an even split between the three, and please don’t try to guess which ones had the majority, but the fact of the matter is, we were long overdue for a new mattress, as evidenced by the two ginormous, people-shaped divots that resided in our existing bed’s surface and the time had finally come to upgrade our sleeping arrangements to something that offered a little more wiggle room and a lot more lower back support!
To be honest with you, I wasn’t really crazy about making the purchase at first – I mean, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but beds are really expensive once you’ve graduated from the entry-level, probably-no-more-comfortable-than-the-box-it-came-in model that you can pick-up for $299 and some pocket change. A bed that is actually pleasant for the act of sleeping, on the other hand, will cost you some major simoleons, but hey, you can’t put a price on a good night’s sleep, right?!
That’s what the sales guy at Mattress Baron told me, anyways … right before he had me fill out all of that long financing paperwo- … hey, wait a minute!
Still, despite a certain distinct level of salesman swindling, I managed to feel at least somewhat justified with our slumber shopping at the sale’s end by taking the opportunity to upgrade from our puny, old queen-size mattress to the grandly-superior, trumpet-warranting vast openness of which only a king can truly boast. I know, I know – you eat enough of the candy bars and eventually you no longer have a choice but to buy the corresponding mattress, but in this case it had actually just been something that we had been planning to do for a long time anyways and besides, it felt good that we were finally moving up to the very best that bed sizes had to offer!
Or so I thought…
Of course, it wasn’t long after signing on that dotted-line and promising the guy behind the desk my firstborn in exchange for an end to our sleepless nights that I learned the sad truth about the hierarchy of mattresses according to size and general awesomeness. Some call it the California King, while others – namely those of us who just recently purchased a Standard King – refer to it more aptly as the Dream Wrecker or the Aspiration Crusher, or even more succinctly put, you’ve got to be kidding me … there’s an even bigger one?!
Whether the sales guy was holding out on me because I hadn’t yet proven that I was truly worthy, or even that simply my credit check wasn’t worthy, I first felt hurt, then angry, and then finally more curious than anything about this newfound size in the world of sleep and slumber furnishings…
What if it wasn’t actually the biggest that they actually came, either???
I mean, what if transcending even beyond the mighty California King was the even more impressive yet Colossal King – a mattress that literally takes up every square foot of the bedroom floor from wall-to-wall, thus basically transforming your bedroom into sort of a makeshift trampoline room for the bouncing enjoyment of all…
…and from there you could take even another flying leap up towards the altitude where you can find the Goliath King, which is the same width as the Colossal King, but towers so high that you actually need a ladder to climb up into bed and you have to worry about rolling into the ceiling fan in the middle of the night!
… until finally you have but one last upgrade to go, that being up to the fear-inducing, ravenous monster that is the Gelatinous King, which as you Dungeons & Dragons fans might assume actually fills the entire bedroom from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, but this time actually consists of some sort of weird, jello-like substance that you can just dive right into whenever you feel like catching a few Zzzzzz’s!
Granted, I wouldn’t recommend taking anything other than short naps inside the Gelatinous King, as air holes are one of the features that didn’t quite make it on the spec sheet, but still, it’s a small price to pay for eternal greatness in the mattress world…
Back to my own purchase, though, it wasn’t long after its humble delivery that I came around and realized that, while maybe it wasn’t the biggest or even the most likely to digest me in my sleep, good, old Kingy was going to prove to be a fine mattress for us yet as we prepared to take the next step in bed ownership, and that eventually, after plenty of wear and tear of its own, the time would come where we’d be upgrading this one to The Next Big Thing, too.
So I guess the sooner we get started on that plan, the better! *wink wink*
PILLOW FIGHT!!!