A Night To Remember

No, I'm not thinking of a romantic movie.

Many years ago we were camping in our pup tent with an air mattress, and we woke up sleeping on the ground. Aside from a little stiffness we were able to laugh about it. That was then, this is now.

Through a sort of comedy of errors we had the opportunity to sleep overnight at our new home before we actually move in. Since it is now our daughter's house, and since they just moved their furniture to their new home in Havasu, and since our house had to be tented for termites in the last minute, we slept at the new address. The night before Donna and Jim slept on the guest air mattress and left with the truck at some insane hour of the morning. So we thought we might sleep on the same "bed" last night. Now there was a little complication. It seems that the dog chewed on the hose from the air compressor, and the mattress proved to be a little leaky. I thoughtfully tried to prepare the mattress for a good night's sleep. I fired up the compressor and poked the nozzle into the intake valve. I laid there wondering when I would begin to notice the stiffening of the mattress. I surmised that the air was leaking from someplace at approximately the same rate it was entering the mattress.

I pulled out the nozzle just to check that it was working. It was. But air was escaping with an alarming gush from the hose as well. I re-inserted the nozzle, pumped a little more, and pulled out the nozzle once again. Only this time the larger black opening, in the center of which was the smaller opening with which I had been occupied, popped out, and now the air gushed out. Just at that perverse moment my wife enters the room and innocently asks, "Is it working?" I barked, "Why did you have to ask that just now?" There was quite enough irritation in my voice to tell her to leave immediately. I needed to apologize later, when I regained my sanity. But now she is coming back into the room with her cell phone in her hand. My loving daughter is on the line. "Are you enjoying your new home?" she sweetly asked. "NOT YET!" was my rude answer.

With a partially inflated mattress we went to bed. My considerably reduced, yet noticeably rotund form flopped into bed next to my sweet wife. Well, it was like a game: when I hit the mattress her side immediately elevated rather rapidly, and I was hopelessly trapped in the great indentation I had formed. I quickly weighed the merits of sleeping where I lie, over against the merits of sleeping on the floor. Since I had brought my body pillow for the occasion, I chose the latter. When I finally extricated my hulking form from this elastic hole, I flopped on my pile of pillows on the floor. Besides the times I needed to struggle to my feet and into the bathroom to relieve myself, I also awakened twice shivering from the cold draft along the floor.

On one of those forays into the lavatory I stumbled on my return over a pillow. Instinctively I put out my hand to brace myself on the "bed", but alas it only appeared to be a bed. I had forgotten, momentarily, that it was a balloon disguised as a bed. There was no substance to break my fall. I went to the floor. Then I noticed that Barbara, upon returning to bed, tried to flop on the "bed" and I heard the "thump" as her back hit the floor.

The whole affair was so ludicrous that we giggled instead of cursing. No, no, it was not because of advanced sanctification. It was more because of sleepless silliness.