3 Kilometers Of Mattresses

A mattress company in Canada, with a whole bunch of stores, is having a big sale. Their goal is to sell enough of their product to make a pile three kilometers high, and that’s piled one on top of another. I wrote to them in an attempt to find out just how many “zzz machines” that would make, but they haven’t answered.

My own quickie figures indicate they hope to unload somewhere between ten and twelve thousand units. That’s a lot of sales for something which people already own; it’s not as if they are trying to move a new gadget to an empty market. You already have a saturated customer base and you’re trying to sell even more. It’s as if you are hawking red-hots at the yearly Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.

I wish them every success and, more than that, I wish they will answer my note.

Do you remember the “L’il Abner” comic strip of some years back? He was a hillbilly, as were almost all the characters, and held a job of sorts in a local mattress factory. His job was to test them by sleeping on each one as it was finished. Having done this, he arrived back home exhausted from the day’s work and immediately went to bed.

If we live to be 75, we will have spent the equivalent of 25 years on a mattress. One-third of our life unconscious, lying there sleeping – and nobody knows why we do it, or need to. One of Mother Nature’s big secrets. Actually, we do less of that than other creatures; my cat needs 14 hours of sleep a day and others animals need more than we do.