Two Twins make a King

Episode One of the Mattress Quest: Memory Foam.

Oh, God help us.

Memory foam. The mattress that arrived on the market with the confidence of a solution to a problem nobody had fully articulated, and the reviews of something that was going to change everything. We were optimistic. We were ready to be changed.

We were not changed. We were deeply, personally offended.

Here is what I think memory foam actually feels like, for those who have been spared: it feels, at first contact, like lying down on the kitchen floor. A kitchen floor that has been covered with a thin layer of fabric to give the impression of softness, while underneath remaining absolutely, implacably, enthusiastically firm.

Then – and this is what the marketing messaging conveniently forgets to mention – you have to work on finding, or rather creating a dent. For your body. You have to lie very still, for a period of time that feels unreasonably long, while the foam slowly, reluctantly, almost dramatically accepts the presence of your body and begins to form what the industry calls a “personalized sleep surface” and what I call a human-shaped dent that took twenty minutes to negotiate.

Fine. You’ve earned your dent. You’re in it. You’re moderately comfortable.

Do NOT move.

I cannot stress this enough. The dent is everything. The dent is the only thing standing between you and the kitchen floor experience restarting from scratch. Any movement…