“For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? Nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.”
So says Deuteronomy 3:11.
A lot of things were destroyed in these Deuteronomy wars, but apparently the giant iron bed was spared as a tourist attraction.
This is Moses the Meek kicking butt here, and I’m super excited because it reminds me that the giants in my life are not going to be a problem…but maybe their beds are.
There comes a time when you are ready to buy a bona fide bed. Usually it’s after all possibility of kids climbing into it with you has passed. When there are no diapers in the house. When the sheets are so thin you can’t tell the design on them anymore and you are tired of keeping the bed frame that holds up the mattress from putting holes into the wall that it was shoved up against.
Anyhow…
I was forty-some-odd years old and ready to graduate to a “big girl” bed, one with a pretty headboard and decorative pillow shams. Hubby watched nervously as I poured through websites and catalogs.
He wasn’t going to sleep in a big girl bed.
Sure enough, I fell in love with a beautiful canopied contraption from Pier One.
It went way beyond four-poster glory. It was sleek and sophisticated. It was handsome and versatile. It could be dressed up with flowing organza and twinkle lights or slicked down in houndstooth and down-filled leather bolsters.
Not that I had a preference.
It was freaking expensive.
Hubby broke into a cold sweat when he saw me click the beauty into the website cart.
He begged for one week to come up with an alternative.
“As long as it doesn’t come from Costco,” I replied, setting the cart aside.
Immediately, he found “a practically new identical bed” on Craigslist.
Willing to save money on the bed meant I could splurge on linens. Right?
Suspicion came too late.
Instead of my graceful elfin fairytale, we were staring into the maw of a gutted tank.
Hubby thought it was, in sheer cubits, the manliest thing he’d ever seen. This was a bed to rest your war boots on.
Or corral elephants in.
Quite possibly it was the final barracks of Og.
The Ammonites must have kept it in storage until Spanish Crusaders carried it across Europe and into the new world, along with horses and cannons and smallpox.
I imagine it easily held the entire ship’s crew.
We dragged the iron bed home in pieces and reassembled it in the bedroom where it took four mighty men (okay, three strong guys and one weakish woman) to coerce it into position.
The mattress lies on crossbars of steel.
Our tile floor is softer.
You have to be one tough giant to sleep on this bed.
“That’s it, I’ve had it,” I said one morning to the Hubbs, “This bed is ridiculous. I’m tired of waking up with half of my body gone numb. It takes an hour before my shoulder stops hunching up into my ear.”
“But sweetie,” he replied, twisting his neck back into position, “you need a firm mattress for a bad back. I can feel all my vertebrae moving into position as I go to sleep.”
And once he’s asleep, the vertebrae keep moving in a desperate attempt to find a place of rest.
The man’s going to be a hunchback.
Cursing the Crusaders, I went shopping.
I began with an extra-thick mattress cover and a down-filled duvet.
I found a foam gel memory mattress topper.
I grabbed a microfiber king-size pillow top.
That mattress was covered like a layer cake and rose another cubit.
I frosted it with fresh clean sheets, four fat pillows, a colorful quilt, a soft fleecy throw, and wrapped it all up with creamy silk drapes tied at the corners.
All I need is an elevator, and we’re set.
And maybe side rails are a good idea for when you graduate to a “big girl” bed.
Maybe…
Easy to relate to this! 🙂 Enjoyed reading this! 🙂