I’ve been thinking about my first paying job today.

Years ago at the tender age of 14, I mowed lawn. That’s right, not plural, singular. There was a nice little ol’ lady that lived in my town that needed a, “strong, young man who is highly knowledgeable of lawn maintenance care” (according to the post it note on the town’s “announcement board” at the local store). Since that young man in town had recently suffered a “mysterious” bicycle accident (hint: it was me who beat him with his bicycle) she had to settle for me.

So the job was this-I had to mow her huge lawn, move boxes in and out of her garage (contents unknown), take care of household chores and listen to her mindless ramblings while enjoying a diet Mountain Dew that she seemed to have an abundance of. I received $20 for my arduous 5 hours of work

Now remember, I was only 14. $20 seemed like a lot of money to me. Yep, I had no responsibilities and no debts that had to be paid off. I was the richest freaking kid in my group of friends.

So what did I spend my Andrew Jackson on? Crap. Since I was the richest kid in my gang of friends, I was called on to buy the ice cream cones, I was volunteered against my will to pay for the video game rentals and I was the one who constantly had to spring for burgers. My twenty dollars quickly disappeared as soon as I got it. I was living from lawn mowing to lawn mowing back then.

So now I have a job that pays a couple of dollars more. The only problem is I can’t spend this money on ‘crap’ anymore. Now I have to pay for adult stuff. No, I’m not talking about pornography (I have Christmas for that), I mean bills, groceries, bills, gas for my car and bills. You know, grown up stuff.

This being said, I now find my self having to save up for stuff that I never thought I would actually ever actively “save up” for. Remember how our parents used to make a big deal about finally getting a new microwave? Now I see why. It seems like anything extra that you may want or need in life now requires that you save up or finance.

My attention has turned lately to my need for new furniture. I barely sit on, watch, stack clothes on or eat at anything that belongs solely to me. Everything has been given to me through generous family members or friends who are able to afford replacements and no longer need their item that had once belonged to someone else.

This includes my bed. I have no idea how old my mattress and box springs are and am also unsure who else has slept on it during its illustrious past. All I know that sleeping on it is equivalent to sleeping on a pile of broken boards while someone punches you in the spine every half hour. Yeah, it’s that bad.

So I have recently made an adult purchase of a new mattress and box springs. Yeah for me. This seemed like a simple shopping job to me, but I soon realized that it is a bigger pain in the ass then searching for a matching sock.

For one thing-mattresses are freaking EXPENSIVE. I was not prepared to have to take out life insurance policies on my brothers (watch your back, Tim and Charles) just to pay for one. After you get over the shock of the sticker price you have to choose from all sorts of different styles. Do I want one that is harder than a Turkish prison or do I want one that literally encompasses your body so that you feel like you’re actually one with the bed? I just want a mattress that doesn’t actually make sleeping a horrifying, painful experience.

So you lay down on the mattresses in the store to ‘test’ them out. Why do the salespeople have to stand there and watch you lay on the bed? It’s like whenever someone wants you to listen to a song or watch a movie and then they sit there and stare at you the entire time you are doing it, wanting to see your reactions. It was uncomfortable having someone watch me try to decide if I was comfortable or not. Seeing as though I don’t think I could ever be fully comfortable and ready to sleep if someone was standing over my bed, I just couldn’t seem to get in the right mindset. Want to know a good way to get these people to leave you alone? Do what I did — immediately roll over on your stomach and massage your butt. For some reason, that worked (and it brought the police!).

So yeah, I got a new mattress. Only thing is, the delivery company won’t take away my old piece of crap mattress for me. So what am I going to do with it? Make a guest bedroom. But I figured out a problem with this solution: my apartment only has two rooms and I don’t think my guests would appreciate sleeping in the kitchen area or in the bathroom. So I guess the old mattress gets taken out to the dumpster during a late-night recon mission and I hope that it gets taken away by someone else.

This is really too bad, because I greatly appreciate people who have guest bedrooms. It used to be that you sleep on a fold out couch in their living room and wake up any time someone else in the house passes through. Now instead of this sleeping arrangement, everyone in the world seems to have an air mattress that they expect you to sleep on instead.

So it comes down to this: I HATE AIR MATTRESSES. If you’re inviting me over and tell me that you have an air mattress that I can sleep on, you might as well say, “Hey, don’t come over. You’re not welcome. In fact, we hate you.” That’s how I’m going to take it.

All air mattresses, no matter how much they cost or where you get them from are going to have some kind of leak in them. I have yet to wake up on one that hasn’t completely deflated during the night and has left me sleeping on the cold, cold ground.

One of the only saving graces of these pieces of crap is that they come with their own pumps now, hallelujah. Someone finally figured out that the only reason you buy a small air pump is to inflate either inner tubes or air mattresses and they decided to finally start installing them on the rubber monstrosities…wow, spell check didn’t go off…I actually spelled “monstrosities” right the first time. Pat on back.

Have you ever had to try to manually blow up an air mattress? I have. I pooh-poohed a sleeping bag while camping once and decided to try to sleep on the inflata-bed I didn’t need to go to sleep on the mattress that night because I actually passed out from lack of oxygen to the brain. I woke up the next morning face to face with an angry raccoon and my feet covered by the half inflated rubber bed. Surprisingly, I had a much better sleep that night then I would have had on the mattress.

So, I’m not practicing what I rant and will continue to offer my hand me down air mattress to overnight guests. I truly wish I could give you a real bed to sleep on during your stay, but due to circumstances beyond my control-it just can’t be. Have fun slowly returning to the floor during your sleep and awake to the sounds of my happy snoozing as I sleep on my new “ultra-firm mattress with built in back support”. Hell, I’ll even let you buy breakfast!

Copyright © 2006 Ray Tice
Please do not remove the copyright from this work.

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