The Dream of the King (Mattress)

When you’re in college, you sleep on a twin mattress, and it’s adequate for supporting bed spins and awkward hookups — but you dream some day of a KING.

When you graduate and are on your own, you step up to a full because it’s all you can afford and all your jail-cell-sized bedroom can fit — but you dream of a KING.

When you get married, you step up to a queen because it’s all you can afford and all your ambulance-sized bedroom can fit — but you dream of a KING.

Then you buy a house and it has a bedroom-sized bedroom — a MASTER bedroom — like you’re suddenly all Downton Abbey. And you get cats and/or dogs and have kids and even though you both know you still can’t really afford it, you scrape together the $80M you need for the box spring and mattress and finally — you have your KING.

And then one night not long after, with your KING full of cats and/or dogs but especially toddler parts — elbows and knees and heads and jabby feet — you lie sideways on the three-inch wide strip of bed cliff that has been allotted you by fate and you think: WHY IS THIS KING SO FUCKING SMALL?!?!

And if you’re lucky you fall asleep despite your existential rage and toddler-fu bruised ribs and you dream of a mattress so big you could punt a football across it and still only reach the middle. As you run frolicking across a field of 500-thread count Egyptian daisies in slow motion, with down-filled puppies nipping playfully at your heels and nothing but wide open virgin bedscape as far as the eye can see you think, NOW it’s a goddamn KING.

Originally posted on Facebook, 8.9.16