Houston McLaury – Opinion Columnist
Throughout my life, I have always been blessed with a soft bed and warm, soft covers to come home to. Yet, over the weekend, I have seen and experienced the influence of the devil. Over the weekend, I traveled to Wisconsin with my friends to celebrate a birthday, and when dividing the beds and who sleeps where, I was given the opportunity to sleep in a nautical-themed room… with a bed as hard as rocks. Through my night of endless tossing and turning, I realized how lucky I was to have that soft bed I have always known throughout my life. Further, I came to the realization that hard mattresses are terrible, mainly because they lack the comfort the soft beds of my youth offered, and because of the effects it has on the back the morning after.
On the subject of comfort, the soft bed with a memory foam mattress pulls miles ahead of the obstructive and destructive rock-hard bed. When one is dreadfully tired from the stresses of the day, from the weight of work and studying and everything else one must deal with, the bed offers a sanctuary from these outside obstructions and from the anxiety they induce. The soft bed immediately offers its comfort, allowing the user to sink into its pillowy fluffy and let their anxieties wash away. One memory that continues to come back to me when considering the comfort of a soft bed is the memory of jumping onto a bed after a long day of middle school filled with fractions and divisions, breathing out and relaxing into the pillows and soft memory foam mattress. This was my comfort, my space to relax, and to let everything wash away.
Meanwhile, the hard stone slab of a bed stands in utter opposition to this ideal: the basic idea of comfort. No, instead the hard bed pushes against its user. It doesn’t welcome one into its embrace but forces itself away from them, holding them at an arm’s length away. Now, one may ask if this bed that I had to sleep on for both nights of my stay was really as hard as I assure you it is in this article. This bed was as hard as a rock, both nights my side ached as what felt like stones and wood was pressed into my body, thanks to the manufacturers of the mattress. It felt as if someone had their knee to my side the entire night, and after about four hours of desperately trying to lull myself to sleep, the sandman came for me and whisked me away to dreamland. The hard bed offered me no comfort and seemed to want to harm me instead.
And harmed me it did, for the morning after I arose with a horrid pain in my back, right at one of the points where the bed seemed to have focused on hurting me. Not only had this bed failed to provide me with any comfort, but it also had adverse effects on my body the following day, making me sore and irritated as I arose to make the breakfast of eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns for my friends and me. The adverse effects of that bed are too many to list after years of sleeping in the comfort and warm embrace of my own bed, and even the one I have at college. I felt like an old man, complaining about the pain in my back throughout the day as we tried to enjoy the beautiful sights of Lake Superior, and it was all thanks to the pain offered by that horrid bed. Going to Duluth as well proved troublesome, walking amongst the aquarium and museums, I was ever plagued with the ill effects from the bed at our quaint little cabin. These beds are not made for the average person, no, they’re instead made for the masochist, the person who loves to wake up with pain in their back and an ache in their neck.
No, these hard beds are not meant for average people, and they are not meant for me. Like stone slabs, they sit in the bedrooms, and if one were to jump on these slabs they would immediately break their back as they made contact with the hard surface. These beds have turned out to be the bane of my existence, following me wherever I go and taunting me with their soft look but unloving surface. Although some individuals may claim they love and adore these concrete slabs in their rooms, the hard bed can offer no single person any comfort during the late hours of the night, often leaving them with a back riddled with pains and pain aches. The soft bed is better in every way, simply because it actually comforts the person using it, and actually supports the back as well. No more will I suffer under the tyranny of the hard bee that ruined my poor back. Instead, I shall rejoice under the reign and under the covers of a soft, comforting bed.