Comrade Hatcher Joins Revolution

On Saturday I joined a revolution. The sleep revolution that is! All you have to do is lay out a couple grand for a Tempur-pedic mattress and you too can be a sleep patriot. The viscoelastic technology is originally NASA developed, so I hesitate to even call this a bed; doing so is tantamount to calling Tang a form of orange juice. Astronauts drink Tang and sleep on viscoelastic surfaces; they don’t drink orange juice and sleep on beds. Here is how their website explains it:

Visco: resistant to change of shape.
Elastic: able to return to its original shape after being forced to change.

Imagine lying on a surface that senses exactly how far to let you "sink in" so that every point on the contour of your body is supported.

When you are not on that surface, it then "flows" back to its original, flat shape. This phenomenon is similar to pushing your hand into the surface of a bowl of water and feeling the water flow to fill every contour and curve of your hand, then return to its original shape once your hand is removed.

I don’t have to imagine! I am already enjoying more restful sleep, and estimate that I require 5-7 fewer minutes of sleep per night. Assuming I live another 40 years, this gives me approximately 60 more waking days, enough time to fit in 2,920 more sitcom reruns on TV Land. Now that’s what I call living your life to the fullest.

My one concern – Tempur pedic is a Swedish company. It figures that the only revolution these risk-averse socialists can foment is one involving the safest activity on the planet. But that is ultimately to their credit, because when people of like ides of economic justice usually launch a revolution, a couple million bodies later and another five decades on they learn it was all a very noble mistake on their part.

I’ve also found that sleeping on my stomach leaves my back rather achey in the morning. I’m sure if I complained, they would explain that it is designed purposefully to make that uncomfortable due to the much greater risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) when sleeping on your stomach. And that while I am an adult in my late 30s, one can never be so sure you are not still at some risk of SIDS. Again, just hearing that makes me sleep more soundly.

My other minor complaint is that the mattress has a distinct odor, not necessarily unpleasant, but enough to trump the smell of freshly washed sheets, which is pleasant. Now here is where I really get concerned. As they used to say, communists are socialists in a hurry. So if the commies in the fifties were compromising our precious bodily fluids by fluoridating the water, is it not possible that the socialist Swedes have chosen some alternative and much slower technology, embedded in my viscoelastic surface, which nightly compromises those same precious bodily fluids a little bit at a time? Call me paranoid, but when I woke up on the third day and inexplicably called my wife “comrade,” I thought to myself – revolution indeed. From each according to their abilities, and to each according to their needs! Does anyone know where I can buy a black turtleneck? Any suggestions on a good proletariat cigarrette I can start smoking?