A Useless Mattress Story
But it can still change your life
Taking care of my body is one of the things I’ve been focusing on this year. That’s one of the reasons I started playing tennis regularly last September and will play my first official match this Sunday, but that’s another topic.
Recently, I replaced the bedding in the furnished apartment I’ve been renting for almost three years. I could no longer stand sleeping on a sunken, poor-quality mattress and waking up every morning with a terrible backache.
Well, I’m cheating a bit. To be more precise, I ordered on Monday night a new mattress, which is the equivalent of the Rolls-Royce but in the field of sleep. Don’t worry, I’m exaggerating a bit and I didn’t go crazy and go into debt for ten years to buy it. There was a very attractive promotion and I thought it was the right time to invest and finally spend peaceful and restful nights. I’ll be getting it Friday afternoon, which means I’ll have spent a magical first night by the time I write the next Scribe newsletter. Chances are, I’ll be sharing my first impressions with you then.
I guess I’ve already lost you. We’ve read more interesting stuff than a guy telling you he’s going to sleep on a brand new mattress. But you see, I’m talking about something big here! Think back to your middle school math classes and take a closer look:
I sleep an average of 7 hours per night, which comes to 2555 hours per year. If we imagine that I will live to be 80 years old, that’s 204,400 hours of sleep. Let’s divide it by 24 to get the result in days (8516) and then by 365. So I will spend an average of 23 years of my life sleeping. As I am the first to consider that this time is not wasted, you can understand why this mattress story matters to me!
In addition to the mattress, I chose two pillows with the sweet name “Nuage”. You probably don’t realize it, but I find this word so pleasant to the ear. Repeat after me: “Nuage”. In English, you should say: “Cloud”. It is much more brutal! “Nuage”. There is something so poetic about this word!
When a little girl or boy is a bit dreamy in class and doesn’t always listen very well, it is often said that he or she has a head in the clouds. If someone tells me one day that my daughter or son has a head in the clouds, I will be the happiest dad in the world!
As I write this, the song “Nuages” played by the legends Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli comes to my ear. Listen also to the cover by the charming duo Pomplamoose, and tell me what it inspires you.
Louis Aragon, a famous French poet, novelist, and journalist, wrote in the collection of poems “Les Yeux d’Elsa”:
Aucun mot n’est trop grand trop fou quand c’est pour elle / Je lui songe une robe en nuages filés / Et je rendrai jaloux les anges de ses ailes / De ses bijoux les hirondelles / Sur la terre les fleurs se croiront exilées.
Also, I can’t wait until Friday, so my head can rest on the soft cloud and my body on the dreamy mattress, for nights with a thousand flavors.