A decent night's sleep? Priceless.

(Opinion)

I went for a little test drive the other day, trying out different models.
One, in particular, was a real beauty, all sleek and shiny on the outside, luxurious to the touch.
"How much," I asked the salesman.
"$7,500," he answered, never batting an eye.
And that's without the engine.
Criminy, what does it cost to get a decent night's sleep around here?
Plenty, it would appear, judging by my recent sojourn into a few mattress stores.
Turns out not only do some mattresses cost more than a decent used car these days, they also seem to come with just about everything but the steering wheel.
Do I want innerspring or foam, continuous coil or pocket springs? And, say, how about a little air?
Um, no thanks on the latter. Yes, I know these "adjustable" beds are nothing like the air mattresses we used to blow up on camping trips.
Even so, memories die hard — hard as the ground I usually woke up on about 3 every morning after my air mattress managed to "spring" a leak.
Leaks are also the reason I've stayed away from waterbeds all these years as well — that and the fear that I might sink into the middle of one, never to rise again.
OK, no beds that come with their own buoys. No beds that come with a pump. That narrows it down.
So does my pocketbook.
For a mere 50 grand or so, I could be sleeping on a Hastens mattress, made with horsehair, cotton, linen and wool.
Custom-hand-crafted — perhaps by gnomes who live in the forest — each bed takes about two weeks to make.
European royalty, it is said, sleeps on these beds, though no word if one of them includes a princess and a certain pea.
Since I foolhardily bought groceries rather than oil when it was selling for $28 a barrel, I'll have to make do with something a tad less pricey.
And a little less, um, fluffy.
I would say that 80 percent of the mattresses I looked at came with some sort of "pillowtop," stuffed with foam.
"If the mattress is so good, why does it need this?" I asked one salesman who had no ready answer, other than to tell me all mattresses have some foam in them. Somewhere.
OK, let's take the opposite tack. How about an all-foam mattress? Maybe, but can I have one that doesn't leave indentations of every little bump and hollow of my body each time I leave the bed?
Reminds me too much of those chalk outlines you see on TV crime shows.
What I really want is the kind of mattress I have now — minus the lumps and bumps that come from a dozen or so years of tossing and turning, a move across town, and grandkids playing trampoline.
Why, this bed you could even turn over, which we've done several times during its lifetime.
But that lifetime has about run out. Same, no doubt, for the bedding that you just know will no longer fit on whatever kind of new "buffed up" bed we do wind up getting.
Fresh hell awaits, I'm sure. Do I want 800-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets or bamboo sheets with a mere 230-thread count.
And what about a new comforter set. (Does anyone even make bedspreads anymore?) Shouldn't cost more than $500 or so.
That's just about what I paid for my first used car, matter of fact. Engine included.

SOURCE: ARIZONA DAILY STAR, MARCH 30, 2008