The Air Mattress

No automatic nothing for Rod.

Sleeping on the air mattress would be over as soon as the Reynolds’ guests left the next day. Stacy bought the full-sized air mattress long before she heard their friends were coming to town, friends she hadn’t seen in 20 years. The guests would get the good bed – their authentic queen-sized mattress – while Rod and Stacy would sleep on the new air mattress in the guest bedroom.

Blowing up the mattress with the electric pump was a breeze, but after Stacy laid on the inflated mattress, she realized there would be problems, especially when Rod laid down. The covering was rubberized plastic, meant to stretch a little to account for the 500 pounds it was designed to hold. The 500 pounds was the limit for the mattress, but the real limit was closer to 300. After the plastic got stretched, it would become thin and weak.

Their combined weight was over 350 pounds. The heavier of the two would sink down. As the plastic stretched with both of them on it, the need to pump it up increased. If one person rose in the middle of the night, the other sunk deep into the mattress.

Rod was too cheap to buy the extra feature that would pump up the mattress automatically when detected a 10% reduction in air. The way it was going, the pump would be on constantly.

He stood at the edge of the bed considering how he might change their situation to make it work. The rebel side of him wanted to take a running jump and flop on it. He envisioned catapulting Stacy upwards, catching the ceiling fan, spinning around a few times and letting go and bouncing back on the bed, and then jettisoning Rod upwards, thereby creating a perpetual bounce house inside their bedroom.

At the height of Rod’s mini-vision, Stacy woke up and saw him smiling.

“What? What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Oh, just admiring your acrobatics.”

Even before he could explain, she had laid her head back on the pillow, probably forgetting what he had said the next morning. Likewise, Rod would not see the need in retelling that tale.