The One I Love

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• May 21, 2017

Poor posture was blamed on scoliosis, but the truth is, my crooked spine mostly straightened out in my very late growth spurt.  This, I was told, is rare.  Usually scoliosis gets worse with growth spurts.  I’m just lucky I guess.  But even before I perpetually slouched in front of a lap top, or notebook, I had bad writers posture when I was still a kid.  My mom berated me for this.  My posture was a reflection of my growing cynical and relatively shitty attitude towards life, and you know what doesn’t help an already jaded disposition?  Having to wear a back brace in your teens.

Just a teen in college, I was waking up with lower back pain.  I was an active, young healthy person, so there was no real reason for this to be happening, even with a slightly crooked spine.  Some nights, I would roll off my bed and sleep on the floor in my bedroom for better rest.  Having been through an insomniac phase before, there was little way of me gauging if this problem was actually physical or just mental.  However, I did have that twin mattress for my entire life so far. Time for that to change.

I was hell bent on buying a new mattress, and once I make up my mind, I’m rather stubborn.  My Mom and I went to one Sleepy’s and the salesman annoyed me so much with his pitching, I walked away from him while he was talking to me and left.  At home, I went online and ordered a full size tempurpedic mattress.

My parents both yelled at me for buying such an expensive mattress (it was roughly $1000).  Although, I think my Dad was more upset that I didn’t get a twin sized bed (because anything bigger than twin implies another person might share my bed, the paranoid Catholic he is).  But my argument was valid.  You spend a third of your life in bed.  I love sleeping.  And I love being in bed when I’m not sleeping, and reading a book, writing, or doing simply nothing.  Plus, I actually had a job where I made good money, and I wasn’t remotely materialistic.  I never bought clothes or name brand anything.  So I  bought the best mattress.

Alas, my folks would not let it go.  It always bothers them if they think their kids are wasting their money, even though it is our money.  My parents both grew up in poor families, so it was important that they raise their kids to earn their own keep.  These are strong values to teach one’s kids, but the drawback to raising your kids to be independent is they sure as hell are going to be independent.  Sure, I had wasted money in the past, but this wasn’t one of those times!  They would later come to accept my logic.  For some reason, it was (is) important for me for my parents to admit when I’m right about things.

When the mattress came, I was stoked.  The delivery guy left it in our dining room, and I was so excited about sleeping on it, I was far from tired.  I made a feeble effort to drag it upstairs by myself, but those mattresses are so dense and heavy, I failed about half way up and waited for my brother to come home to help me.

“Look Mitch!  This is my new tempurpedic mattress!” I declared with the same enthusiasm as bragging about my 4.0 GPA.

“Great,” he said, with the same sarcastic enthusiasm as hearing about my 4.0 GPA.  “You spent how much on this mattress?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“Should’ve bought a surfboard.  Or two”

Indeed.  My brother and I were already notorious for buying surfboards, especially used ones in people’s sheds from those who tried but were too deterred by the difficulty of the sport.

My brother helped me get the mattress up the stairs (actually, I think he did it alone).  I didn’t buy any new bedding for my mattress yet, and we didn’t have any fitted sheets or otherwise for a full sized bed.  I went for some of the older queen sized linens  in the closet to make my new bed.  When I returned, my brother had a bong on the bed, and he was jumping up and down on the mattress going, “hey those commercials are right!”

“What the fuck are you doing!?” I scolded him.  Jesus!  I just spent all my money on this thing, and he’s testing the validity of the commercial with a bong?  If you’re not a pot smoker, let me fill you in, bong water is the absolute worst smelling liquid.  My new purchase is literally a giant sponge.  I chased him off the bed ready to kill him while he laughed hysterically.

All my family members made it a point to lay down in my bed, and they all complained, “it’s too hard.”  It did seem that way at first, but then you melt into it, and it’s the most comfortable place to be.  Line a coffin with this material in it, and put me in it now.  I was in love.  The first night, I slept peacefully, no lower back pain in the morning, and as nights went on, my sleep got better.  I slept through the night longer, tossed and turned less.  Tempurpedic should really be paying me for this blog.

There was no doubt about it I made the right choice.  The bed called to me as my eye lids got heavy during a boring lecture, or late at party when the booze wears off.  Many nights I’d walk home drunk and high at one in the morning through rain and snow, for miles, just because I wanted to sleep in my bed.

But in those first couple weeks, I’d wake up and get interrogated at the breakfast table about how my sleep was.  You don’t find it too hard?  No.  It’s perfect.  Was it especially unusual for a 19 year old to buy such a mattress?  For fucks sake, why was my family so obsessed with my mattress purchase?  Of course this wasn’t about the mattress at all.  This was about who was right, in the most utterly ridiculous manner, considering we could technically BOTH be right.  My parents have more than complained about how stubborn their kids are… well, if nothing else, we were already slowly turning into our parents.  We’re all good at making concrete decisions about things that are totally subjective.

“Just try it,” I urged them.  An invitation I’d later regret.  Because I’d come home from class, or a friends, and one of my family members would be napping, reading, or playing a game on their phone in my bed.  I think my brother napped in my bed every goddamn day.  And if I ever did spend the night at a friends house, my parents would sleep in my bed.  Even after sleeping in it, they insisted it was too firm.  But then, come the weekend, they’d press if I was staying over one of my friends houses.  Why?  They preferred it when I came home.  But they wanted to sleep on that bed.

My mom admitted she thought my mattress was a solid purchase.  It took my dad years to admit that I was right about spending money on that mattress, and my parents would later buy a tempurpedic themselves.

I have dated guys who told me they missed my mattress, not me, and I totally agreed with them!  I was like, “yeah, how could you not, it’s amazing!”  It would be impossible for me to be offended by that statement.

I love my mattress so much, I can’t believe I get anything done.  Some mornings, I just stay there, nestled in my sheets, lamenting the thought of leaving.  Actually, that’s pretty much every morning.  But some mornings, I get stuck there, where my body is at maximum comfort but my head is caught in thought loops.  This, I admit, is not always healthy.

It’s good I’m passionate about my (hopeful) career in comedy.  Otherwise, the worst part of my day would be leaving my bed and the best part of my day would be returning to it (though that is sometimes, if not often, the case), and that is certainly not a good way to live life.  If I’m on the road, or sleeping elsewhere, I think about how much I miss my little apartment, and that marvelous bed.  God, do I look forward to returning to it night after night, eating popcorn and watching something funny or reading a book.

This is how much I love that mattress.  In the event I was at the edge of a cliff, with my Mom dangling on one hand, and my mattress in the other (like the ending scene in The Good Son), admittedly, not a realistic scenario, I would of course choose my Mom, but there would be a moment of hesitation.