One wonders why things already bulging at the seams have to be inflated out of proportion until – worst case and poof! – they are blown to bits. Take FIFA. Poof! Or the stock market. Or diligent kids having to excel on an ever wider field until poof! their attitude-refusal-button is activated and stays triggered seemingly forever. Take parts of the body high and low – enlarged to gigantic enormity until, oops, poof! and ouch! … And – greetings from the Princess and the Pea in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy-tale – take the fashionable box spring bed with mattress over mattress forming layer over adventurous layer. Aerial ladders will soon have to be employed to conquer the silly tiered pile and safety nets mounted for the restless sleeper. If it makes poof! then, there won’t be much space left for the debris to disperse. Just beware of the springs!
It’s an insatiable world – yet the climax never comes
Seriously now: how comfortably and restfully can someone possibly sleep? Better than well, deeper than deep? Can we wake up refresheder than refreshed? And how many encased springs does a person need to guarantee their night to become a good and healthy one?
Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green,
Father’s a nobleman, mother’s a queen…
Not too long ago, box spring beds were luxury amenities found almost exclusively in top-notch hotels and posh US or GB households. In all likelihood, most of today’s XXXL and/or ultra-extra-thickly upholstered specimen are still prevalent in that ambience. Apparently, the urge for average consumers to own one as well seems to have gone viral, and marketers would be nitwits not to exploit the ongoing buying-mood of the mattress-happy box spring junkie out there.
Box spring beds: not only for princesses
As is not seldom the case, labels do not have much to do with what they promise: „box spring bed“ is not a registered trademark and thus a term liable to be widely misused. As the proper thing can be quite an investment, rock-bottom prices should set buyers on alert.
The Princess and the Pea
To verify that the princess was truly a princess, the old Queen took twenty mattresses, piled them on top of a pea, and then laid twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses. We all know the disturbing outcome.
For gender equality: Had the princess been a prince, he would surely have encountered identical adversities.
Extra coil-support, quilted borders and plush top mattresses
For the original box spring bed, a well-crafted solid „box“ containing springs, a decent mattress that suits the physical requirements of the future user plus perhaps a protective top layer seem to have been sufficient in the past. Nowadays, they have to be custom designed and/or built according to a „formula“ based on computer-generated ergonomic prerequisites. In costly models, springs – fine-tuned to the discerning sleeper’s needs – are each individually sewn into separate pockets so as not to invade the neighbouring spring’s territory, have to act as sturdy „shock absorbers“ and are sometimes piled in two layers to form a „power package“ that helps distribute the sleeper’s weight in the most refined way.
Why don’t they simply find a pigeon to pick out the darn pea?
Once the summit is reached and mattress-topping options are exhausted – which might soon be the case for the mere reason of statics and user(un)friendliness – the ho-hum box spring bed of the past will have to have its well-deserved renaissance.
Which is very good news for sleepwalkers!
Image by Edmund Dulac – in the public domain and free of copyright.