Readers Digest Version This is the one where I talk about the time we bought a mattress and I mention mattress stains.
Mattress? They cost a lot. Why didn't you tell me? This is the closest I have come to buying a house. Or a car. (Odd that I have never done either, eh?)
Being Easter weekend, our thoughts naturally turned to the slashed prices at Mr. Sleep-a-lots Mattress Warehouse Super Easter Sale ("Where you'll rise up from our beds just like our fallen savior did!!"). Actually, because we are dorky people who were raised by Consumer Reports toting parents (different parents mind you) we did some research.
Apart from learning many things about mattresses that we didn't know (it's all about the ticking (not the clock kind)) we did learn this: Don't go to Sleepys. Don't go to 1-800-Mattress. The horror stories are fast and furious for those types of places.
Where did we end up going? Blooming-f*cking-dales. They have mattresses. Who'd thunk. It was actually a pretty nice experience with their polite staff and calming, somewhat cozy sales floor.
Stains When you buy a mattress there, they offer you a stain removal protection which we somehow were talked into. How did that happen?
It was either the "well, I am already spending a million dollars, what's an extra buck now?" factor or the way the salesmen told us about all the types of stains the service covered. "Well. It could be a bodily fluid. Or, coffee. Maybe wine. Or blood. Maybe the baby or a pet throws up on the bed."
This guy had been selling mattresses for twenty-five years, but you got the feeling he was still having a hard time doing this part of his pitch. The talking about mattress stains. With strangers.
I wanted to delve deeper in this topic. "How about coffee and wine - together? Could you get that out? And more importantly, what are people doing in bed with coffee *and* wine?"
"Body fluids, eh? So, let's say you had a mixture of blood and something like, um, olive oil? Could they get that out?"
"How about poop? Poop and coffee? Poop after eating your weight in blackberries?"
Final note about the mattress Mrs. Robot turned to me as we left the store and asked, "what should we tell our old mattress?"
What is that concept? The giving of inanimate objects human feelings? Anthropomorphism. (thanks internets!) This came up yesterday as we were watching that great Spike Jonze Ikea commercial - the one with the sad lamp in the rain and the Ikea man who says, "It has no feelings! And the new one is much better."
My theory is this. It seems like we tend to anthropomorphize a lot when we are younger. I am thinking of the drama surrounding, say, a stuffed animal or a blanket. It also seems like we outgrow this to a certain extent - we reach a certain point where a switch is triggered in our brain. Now, there are people I know. Family members. Neighbors. Who I suspect never had that switch triggered. They are the ones that assign all this emotional value to objects. Sometimes warranted, but sometimes not.
I wonder if there is any relationship between anthropomorphism and pack-rat behavior?
