When my husband and I moved in together, he convinced me to buy a waterbed.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I know, insert the ‘bow chick a wow wow’ here.
Remember the waterbed? It had a vinyl water-filled bladder with a temperature control device that was supposed to synchronize with human body temperature.
Waterbeds were all the rage back then. It was the 90s. Everyone had shoulders pads, big hair and waterbeds.
It was reported that Hugh Hefner had a huge waterbed at the Play Boy Mansion covered in Tasmanian possum hair. Can you just picture Hugh with his hairy chest and captains hat laying naked on his possum hair waterbed.
I know what you’re thinking…. Growwwllll. I am coughing up a fur ball just thinking about it.
Anyway, hubby insisted that it was the only bed he could sleep on so when we moved in together I gave in and agreed to the waterbed.
It was the old-fashioned waterbed that had the big wooden frame around it and a bookshelf headboard. It took up most of the bedroom. There was no changing the room around once it was filled. A hundred men couldn’t shift it an inch.
Back then hubby worked shifts and would often come home when I was still sleeping. This bed did not have the wave control that later models had. He would try to tip toe into the bed but the slightest movement at all sent me flying in to the air and I would end up on the floor beside the bed. On the way down to the floor I would hit something, an elbow, a knee or my face on that wooden frame.
He said it was like sleeping on a big cruise ship. I thought it was more like, victory at Sea.
Then we moved.
It took longer to move that bed than anything else in the house. It took a full day just to drain it! Then we had to take the bed frame apart and pack it all up.
Setting it up in the new house also took a day. We had to run the garden hose from the bathroom to the bedroom and hook it up to the mattress. That was after we spent a day putting that huge bed-frame together.
One of us had to stay in the bathroom to make sure the hose didn’t come undone while the other one waited in the bedroom making sure the connection to the mattress didn’t come undone.
You could hear the floor boards creaking as they tried their best to hold the extra 2000 pounds of weight.
We finally got rid of it when I was pregnant.
At around the eighth month mark I was as big as a whale. I couldn’t wear my own shoes anymore because my feet looked like flippers. I had to wear hubby’s sneakers around the house. I could barely get in an out of a chair let a lone a waterbed.
One night while hubby was working, I went to go to bed. At this point, it was like a diving exercise. I would sit on the side of the bed and fall backwards. The waves would carry me in, so I could haul my bloated legs on board.
It took a good fifteen minutes to get my pregnant body lined up in the middle. Once I finally got settled, I had to pee. That started the whole process of trying to get out of the bed. Remember this waterbed was one of the old ones that didn’t have the wave control or back support. It was just a big bladder filled with water.
I tried to roll over on my side, but I couldn’t get my body to roll. The extra weight around my middle was keeping me anchored down. I tried rolling to the other side with the same response. I was flopping around like a fish out of water.
I was trapped in the middle of it! Like a big pregnant turtle on her back.
Flailing around in the bed like that on top of a big giant bladder only made my pregnant bladder scream, “empty me now!”
I tried to reach the phone on the night stand to call for help. I was able to reach the receiver and knock it off the cradle but instead of falling into the bed, it fell on the floor. This was before cell phones. So now in addition to being held captive on a waterbed and holding my pee, I had to listen to the beep, beep, beep from the phone being off the hook. God love the 90s!
I was detained against my will on the Good Ship Lollipop for about an hour. By the time I broke free my own bladder was busting.
Hubby was working the all-night shift and by the time he got home the next morning I had the bed drained and the bladder rolled up in the front hall.
Never underestimate the strength and determination of a woman who is eight months pregnant.
That afternoon we went to Sears and picked out a chiropractic, pillow top queen mattress. I remember crawling in bed that nigh feeling like God himself was cradling my lower back under all that pregnant weight.
To this day he still wishes he had the waterbed because he would sleep better.
That’s not going to happen.
I think that idea has sprung a leak.
Comments