Ellen and Uncle Dave offered us their basement to sleep in after the
day's festivities on the Fourth. We like their basement. For one, it's
verboten to the dogs, so we don't have to worry about one of us
getting up to use the bathroom only to find the other smothered under
doggy paws and kisses. For two, it is almost completely dark, which of
course satisfies the part of me that looks for places to hide when the
zombie apocalypse strikes. The undead would never think to look for me
here! Now as long as I train myself never to need food or water, I can
outlast the dead and repopulate the earth with my wife. Taxes? Never
again!*
Dave and Ellen even went so far as to buy a new air mattress when they
pulled their old ones out of storage and found out both of them
leaked. Dave was off walking Charlie and Wylie, the dogs, so Ellen,
Brandi and I dragged everything out of the box to see how it fit
together. The mattress was straightforward, albeit a little tight in
the space. The inflating agent, as Ellen explained, was a little
nonstandard: a vacuum cleaner from the 1950s that reversed flow by
detaching the hose from one end of the fire extinguisher-like cylinder
and attaching it to the other end. This was completely baffling to us,
so we waited for Dave et al to return. The final setup also involved
jamming the hose into a funnel, itself stuck into the valve of the
mattress. It worked surprisingly well. Inflation took just a few
moments.
And then we knew we had a problem.
Dave insisted it happened when he twisted the now-full mattress away
from the entertainment center, gouging a hole in the side. I worried
it was my fault, unfurling it so close to the entertainment center in
the first place. Either would do cause the wave of air we felt washing
over our faces. Thinking quickly, Dave found a roll of duct tape and
slapped a pair of patches over the tear. "Air is like water," he
explained. "It finds places to go." The tape, he hoped, would be
secure enough to hold the mattress until morning. Just to be kind, he
filled the mattress again. We went upstairs to spend some family time
and put the matter out of our minds.
When we came back, the mattress was already partially-deflated. Brandi
sat back on it and bravely decided to sleep on it. A quick test showed
that both of us would probably suffocate if we tried to sleep side by
side; the curvature of the mattress took us both in the center,
leading to collission and probable tragedy. I took the couch.
Surprisingly comfortable, I slept through the night, waking only once
because it was so dark I couldn't figure out where the hell I was. In
the morning, though, Brandi's mattress was flat as a pancake. Somehow,
my wife slept through the whole thing. Nice work, dear!
That day, and without explanation, Dave took the mattress back for a
full refund.
* Except a death tax that would only apply if you were dead, still
working and had a social security number. And in this case, by "tax" I
mean "bullet to the brain pan."
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