about two years ago elly and i decided we needed a new mattress or maybe elly decided it because i didnt pay much attention to the problem we had an old mattress wed had it for years and the salesman wed bought it from had assured us it would last us a lifetime and it was getting older and lumpy or lumpy in some places and hollowed out in others and i just assumed it was part of a normal process of aging it was getting older we were getting older and wed get used to it but eleanor has a bad back and she was getting desperate to get rid of this mattress loyally that had lived with us for such a long time and so that i thought i knew all its high points and low points its eminences and pitfalls and i was sure that at night my body worked its way carefully around the lumps dodging the precipices and moving to solider ground whenever it could
but maybe eleanor sleeps more heavily than i do i have a feeling that i spent much of my life at night avoiding the pitfalls of this mattress that i was used to and it was a skill id acquired over the ten or fifteen years of this mattress’ life so i felt there was no reason to get rid of this mattress that had been promised to us by a salesman who said it would last the rest of our lives i figured we were going to live long lives i didnt think we were anywhere close to dying so neither was the mattress but eleanor kept waking up with backaches
still i figured it was a good mattress and that elly just didnt have enough skill at avoiding the lumps mattress was at fault it never occurred to me that the so i didnt do anything and elly didnt do anything because shes not into consumer products and hates to go shopping but by the end of a year elly convinced me because she has a sensitive back and i dont that she had a more accurate understanding of this business than i did so i said sure eleanor lets get a new mattress were rebuilding the house as long as were going to have a new house we may as well have a new mattress but eleanor said how will i know its a good one i dont want to get another mattress that gets hollowed and lumpy and gives me backaches when i wake up how will i know how to get a good one
i said well open the yellow pages and well look up mattresses and therell be several places that sell them point a finger at one of these places and ill close my eyes and and it will be a place that has lots of mattresses where we can make a choice as to what constitutes a good one by lying on them
now elly really knew that you cant just walk into a place and buy a mattress she knows this about american consumer goods and she knows that these places would be equipped with rich delusional capabilities whatever they might be
we would go to a great warehouse with subdued lighting where they played somniferous music that encouraged you into restful comfort while people would be heard talking in hushed voices walking about examining the mattresses or testing them by gently reclining on them “oh are you buying that one my aunt sylvie had one just like it and practically lived on it”
“thats a wonderful mattress my uncle everett suffered for years from lumbago that never let him sleep and slept like a baby ever since” she knows that these places would be equipped with rich delusional he bought that mattress “my aunt agnes had asthma and she used to wake up every hour gasping for breath sleeping on that mattress she sleeps like a log since shes been she rises fresh every morning and plays three sets of tennis every afternoon and shes seventy-three”
[…]we drive out to the one on miramar and its in one of those little malls with a vietnamese restaurant a shoe store and an aerobic studio for women and theres a big empty looking storefront that says THE MATTRESS WAREHOUSE its encouraging i say theres a big truck outside filled with mattresses elly says yes but the place looks as blank as a tire store it doesnt look very impressive i said well the mattresses are all lying down on the floor and youre looking in the window
so i get her into the store and we start looking around trying to figure out where to start and there is a helpful little man an elderly irishman with freckles and gray hair and very laid back and he wants to know if he can help us
can you tell me where the better mattresses are asks eleanor
it all depends on what you want my dear
i want something eleanor says thats firm but comfortable
no i said eleanor you want it to be more than firm every time you talk to me about a mattress you want it to be hard because youre afraid youll sink into it
but what if its the wrong one she said well get used to it i said but seriously she said what if its the wrong one ? i said what would be the right one ? eleanor forget it it doesnt matter you know what luther said when he was confronted by the disciple who wanted to know what to do if he wasnt sure whether or not he was in a state of grace ? he said “sin bravely” i said dammit we dont know if we got the right mattress we dont know if we got the right mixmaster we dont know if we got the right anything theres no way to know let us live cheerfully in our ignorance and we went home
[…]so now were sleeping on the great mattress that eleanor selected so carefully for us and she still has back troubles but theyre not as bad as the ones she used to have so either this is the best possible mattress for her and for us or not and this is the situation that i think best describes our postmodern condition i believe in taking descartes’ advice if youre lost in a forest and you have no idea which way to go with respect to which go for it straight ahead its not likely to be any worse than anything else