Mattress Mart

At 1:30 I left the house in the car to go buy a mattress. By 2:30 I was lying on my bed, on a new mattress.

The story of my mattress is this: I have a 3/4 sized bed, sort of an odd size, but it has always done me well. When I was young I had a single mattress on it with pillows stuffed down the side because, well because that's the way it was. In retrospect, I see it was because we were poorer then, but I was a kid and didn't know it any different.

Sometime in my childhood a 3/4 size mattress entered my room. It was a hand-me down, I think, from another family member. That mattress stayed on my bed until last summer when my aching back told me enough is enough. I hauled the old mattress out and used the old bunk bed mattress -- actually a fairly new bunk bed mattress. The only catch was that it was a single size. The 3/4 mattress went to the basement.

In March of this year, our water heater exploded.

It was old, it was rusty, it was rented from a company. A company who had to pay for the repairs to our basement, and replace things that were damaged. Including my sorry, old mattress, which was soaked and grew mould. After months of running around with the insurance company, today I replaced that mattress.

After installing it, with my sheets and my pillows, my mom and I lay down on it.

"There's room for two people here!" she said.

"And?" I replied.

As much as I would love to fill that extra space, I will also love having it all to myself.