The Monster In My Mattress

Do you ever remember being scared that there was a monster under your bed or in your closet when you were a youngin'? I personally was quite frighten of the dark in general because my imagination would take a hold of me and create wild creatures that only belonged to the darkness. Well, thankfully, as I've become so much more mature my imagination is not nearly so wild. Except for when it comes to my mattress.

When I moved to SF 3 years ago I inherited a mattress from a friend, who inherited it from my sister, who inherited it from her cousin-in-law who had had it a few years already. Needless to say that by 2010, this mattress was something of an antique in mattress-years. I've flipped that sucker so many times and in so many directions that it's bit difficult to figure out which side it hasn't been flipped to. Well, I finally bit the bullet (where the heck does that expression come from?) and purchased a new mattress. (Which is such a grown-up thing to do, by the way.) I was all excited because there was a memory foam mattress deal through CostCo. It arrive Wednesday via FedEx and I rushed home to unwrap and set it up. It was such a little adventure to undue the multiple layers (2) of wrapping, drag it on to the bed stand, and watch it inflate, er, rise. Expand? I did notice that there was some pretty mighty fumes coming off of it and decided to leave it be for a couple of hours. My roommate suggested that I sleep on the couch for the night and give it a good length of time to air out. Good call, roomie! So I very happily bedded down on the couch for the night (we have a rather cushy couch that I'm secretly always longing to spend the night on). It still smelled kind of strong on Thursday night, so again I hit the couch. Then both my roommates left for the long weekend and I decided that it was an opportune time to spend some quality time on our cushy couch. Well, I enjoyed it, but I'm ready for a real bed.

Yesterday morning I decided to probe the depths of interweb wisdom and found out that memory foam mattresses can actually be quite toxic. (I really only looked at one of the discussion board thingies so my knowledge isn't terribly...vast.) One woman mentioned how she had headaches all the time, until she got rid of her mattress. Another person told some horrible story about a guy in Florida. I barely skimmed it.

I was already freaked out that my mattress might be trying to kill me. Then I started thinking about what it would be like if my mattress was a monster and I was sleeping on top of it.

Would one night I open my eyes to see big yellow-green eyes staring unblinkingly unto mine with huge fangs that reflected the moonlight and big furry claws that needed combing? Or what if it got me from beneath? Instead of eyes, there'd be four large paws with only three claws each moving uber stealthily because my monsters are always stealthy, except for poor clumsy Goorbrrarg. But we don't talk about him much. And yes, any monster from a decent family has multiple R's in their name. Anyhow, did my monster want to eat me?

Sunday night I slept on my old mattress in the dining room. Again a fun little adventure, but there's a reason I'm getting rid of that mattress. It's been 5 nights of an open window, a fan, and general chaos in my room. I think it's time to face my fears. And get a good night's rest.

The thought has occurred to me that I'm grateful to think that if any little creepy crawlies come near in the night they may die of asphixiation. Poor li'l guys. Serves them right for trying to mess with my mattress monster.

P.S. I had to slightly borrow Jenna's idea for drawing, just to give you an idea of what the monster might look like. Thanks, Jenna!