Mattress Mattress

I was introduced to the great American mattress by the kind souls at The Chapel on the campus of UAkron.  Being an international student with meagre means, I had signed up with them to receive some free basic furniture, which included a blue 6" twin mattress with a bunkie board.  The mattress was apparently unused, and therefore passed the test of sanitariness.  It had however been damaged in during transportation, causing the original buyer to reject it.  Other than the frayed seams and an obnoxious mutilation of fabric on the non-sleeping surface, the mattress wasn't visually unappealing.  Also, one didn't have to perform a finite element analysis on the mattress to know that some springs were damaged; the mattress was bouncy in some parts and recalcitrant in others.  My 23 year old body however organically adapted to this unevenness with no problems at all.  I was in fact quite pleased with this free piece of bedding.  I was and will always be grateful to have received it.  It stayed with me for two years until a particularly ghastly army of bedbugs infested the off-campus UAkron student community, and I had to transfer ownership of the mattress to the said bedbugs.

The reason I tell you this story is that I want you to know I wasn't always hypersensitive about my nightly support surfaces.  I don't want you to think that I am one of those people who use plush mattresses as an example to grumble about the decadence of civilization and societal collapse.  That being said, I truly don't understand the great American mattress.  You know what I am talking about.  I am referring to the luxurious looking, opulent, rich mattress you find in hotels.  The mattress that is meticulously attired in clean white sheets with enough layers to confuse you as to which two layers to insert your body into.  The mattress that cause your posterior to descend so much when you sit on it that you can feel the rest of the mattress at your elbows and you suddenly feel like a diminutive human.  The mattress that is so cushy that you wonder if your body will get entirely engulfed in it like a slice of aloo in besan batter during the bajji making process.

I grew up in a land where most people sleep on cotton or coir mattresses.  As such, even the highest number of springs in an American spring mattress cannot meet the mattress hardness I am used to.  Until last year, I would complain daily to Pavana of a neck sprain or a backache and spend many nights sleeping on the floor with an old comforter.  One fine day, Pavana literally dragged me to the neighborhood mattress store and forced us to spend a fortune on an extra hard mattress.  This mattress was supposed to be the liberator to my nightly anatomical woes and Pavana's solution to put a stop to my incessant grievances.  

However, much to Pavana's chagrin, this wasn't the case.  

My current sleeping arrangement is a futon mattress covered with a 100% cotton Bombay Dyeing bedsheet.