tuesday . february . twenty . two thousand one paul and i have been sleeping on a very old mattress which is placed ever so gently on the hard wood floor for a long time now. the sleep part is marginal and the getting up part is much worse. we were driving on our street and noticed a bed place and we decided to buy a new bed. we walked in and before our eyes adjusted to the soft "bedroom" lighting of the joint, a voice from the back said: "hi. are you from out of town?" this is the wrong thing to say on two levels. 1) if we were, in fact, from out of town, it would have made us uncomfortable to have our cover blown so overtly. and 2) because we are, in fact, not from out of town, we are now left with the nagging suspicion that somewhere in our dress, or cadence, there is an unspoken message of "hey! these guys are from out of town. shun them, for they do not belong!!!" the voice came from don, the bed guy. note: don introduced himself no less that 4 times. "i'm don" or "my name is don" and "just ask for don" and so on and so forth. i recognize this as another one of the techniques that don must have been taught in his "how to sell a bed" seminar, but he needs practice. we took a look around the show room, but nothing was quite right. we asked to see some books. don: (to me) take a look at this one. i think you need a grand bed. you need something dramatic and romantic. i can tell by looking at you that you want a bed with drama and character. read: you are the freakiest person we've had in here and therefore, because i recognize that anyone with a pierce or wearing boots or just generally not like myself must want a show off-y bed. my name is don. this is also a technique at which don is unskilled. i'm sure they taught him that he should use his superior (?) sense of observation to size up potential marks..um..customers . you know, decide who they are by your basic life experience and all the filters you see things through and then, use these keen observations to sell, sell, SELL. what don doesn't understand, see, is that regardless of how keen his observations may or may not be, you don't want to TELL THE PIGEON EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT THEM. duh! you can call me don. so i express to don that i may not want my bed to overshadow my personal style and we are looking more towards the scandinavian side of things. ("iiiiiiiiiiikea, this is comfortable!") so he pulls out the good book, we make some photocopies and we leave feeling a little dirtier than when we began. his name was don. it took a month before we had managed to scrape the residue of don off of our bodies enough to permit the next attempt at a bed purchase. we went to the sunny kobe cook (the don corleone of the northwest mattress empire) place first to find that, not only would we not be able to afford anything in that joint, but surrounding the building on all sides are men in sandwich boards, dancing around and advertising the discount mattress place across the parking lot. AMBUSH! so, across the lot we went to find a much smaller room, filled on all sides by mattresses with beavis and butthead at the helm, only nicer because they work on commission. sample conversation overheard as we were laying on all the mattresses: beavis: dude, where's my toast? butthead: it's right there, man. beavis: because, i was like, is this all there is left? i mean, how did my toast disappear so fast? butthead: no, dude. i took a bite of your toast, but your toast is still there. after much debate (firm vs. soft) we found something we liked at a pretty good price and we took it. in the mattress place, they had it set up on a box spring. (we decided to only get a mattress for now and keep searching for the decorative part. ) we bought the mattress, the box spring and a stand with wheels to go underneath. ok, see the stand, we now realize, is really not necessary...and, well, we didn't really measure anything. what i'm trying to say is that the bed is eleventy million feet high, approximately. i dream about birds and planes and i cling to paul out of falling paranoia. it's a good bed, though. comfy. and you can take tall naps in it. my name is don.