Vic Socotra

06 March 2009

Macy’s Metaphor Department

(James Thurber Awakes)

The bed broke at approximately 0505 EST this morning. It was not a James Thurber moment, if you recall the hoary old tale that was included as a bit of whimsy in the intimidating canon of American literature back in Middle School.

Nothing sailed down the stairs. No hilarity involving aged relatives and flying massive furniture. Just a crack and a slight slump that indicated something really important and structural had failed.

Some bit of classical music was playing on the clock radio- I have no idea what it might have been, or who composed it- but it was something light and optimistic from the age before the last one, Certainly more cheery than the one in which I found myself in the darkness the structure beneath me shifting in uncertainty.

The thing is that bed isn’t that old. It looks like a solid mahogany antique, but it isn’t. It is of modern construction, probably made overseas someplace by light-weight dwarves.

I went to the well-respected Macy’s store to get it, and it was one of the first things that I purchased when things finally started to turn around a few years ago, and I decided that having a room in which to put one, dedicated exclusively to the proposition of rest and recreation was an achievable goal.
The latter component has been elusive, but hope, like the mattress, springs eternal.

The problem with the bed was that although it looked massive and sturdy in the showroom, the slats that support the comfy Queen-size pillow-top Sealy Posturpedic mattress and box spring are- or were- secured to the side rails by miniscule little screw fasteners.

The first time the slats failed, I realized I had not been in the furniture section of the store, but in Macy’s Metaphor Department.

So, as the coffee brewed, steaming water flowing over the finely-ground Dazbog Organic Sumatra Mandheling beans (a wonderful heavy body, sweet and earthy with a distinct lingering finish) I found myself on my back with a Philips screwdriver, a larger screw attempting to prop the box-spring, mattress comforter and pillows into the air with one hand while placing the replacement screw through the bracket into the old stripped hole, seat it, and then screw if home, lefty-tighty, righty-loosey since of course the screw was on the inside and I had to do it backwards.

Sorry about the product placement, since I know it is awkward in print, but the Sealy and Dazbog people have been very helpful, and times being what they are, have started to insist on a click-through count. Let me know if the hot-links don’t work.

You can right-click on them all you want.

Anyway, all those coordinated actions were impossible without the addition of another couple helping hands, and the loss of the single screw resulted in a glorious hour of manhandling the box spring out of the frame, tipping it up with the ungainly mattress (sorry, Sealy, don’t click on this one), and climbing into the middle of the bed to do the job properly.

Though of course, it was not done properly. I know how this is going to go, just like you do. The new screw will prove inadequate to the load over time and will fail, causing all this travail to be done again.

The real answer was to get out the drill, the extension cord, the drill bits and some through bolts, and do the job properly so that this incremental fixing would be done once and for all.

Of course, I didn’t do it. Maybe next time, if the bed happens to break in the middle of the day when the tools are out. Just like the economy.
By the time I got to the computer it was already too late to do anything but marvel, briefly, that General Motors was trading at less than two bucks, General Electric was less than six, and the Stock Exchange had suspended the rules about penny stock trading in order to avoid de-listing the most important blue chip stocks in the world.

If I had a link to click on for either one, I would encourage you to do so, but their advertising budgets are way down and there is no profit in it. Not like a really great night's sleep on a Sealy, or a fine life-affirming cup of authentic Dazbog Russian-style coffee.

They should have bolted this all together when they had the chance. It looks like it could be too late now.

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