When I moved out of the dorms and into my first apartment, I needed to buy a bed. In a fairly typical college student move, I maxed out the little room left on my new credit card to get a cool futon. It wasn’t just a cotton batting one, no, it had a two-layer foam core and a life expectancy of five to ten years.
It really was a great futon. I threw it down on the floor of every bedroom I had over the past 14 years. It was easy to move too. I just rolled it up and threw a rope around it. (After seeing me do this, a friend dubbed it the “burrito of love”.)
If you poke around in this blog a bit, you’ll see that I had massive back problems about a year ago. They really never went away. Finally it occurred to me that it might be my 14-year-old futon. I had recently bought an inflatable bed for traveling. I started using it at home too and found that I couldn’t sleep on the futon anymore. It was just too painful.
Trivia finally forced my hand. I wanted to maximize sleeping space in my house to I figured it was time to buy a real bed. I spent hours laying on mattresses and eventually picked one out that was probably more than I really should have spent. But hey, I deserved something for sticking it out for all those years, right?
After a week or so on the bed I was annoyed because my amount of back discomfort really hadn’t changed. Oh, it felt nice to sleep on and it was nice being more than six inches off the floor, but I really bought it to help my back.
About a month after that it occurred to me that my back hadn’t hurt in a while.
It seems to have finally solved my back problems. I still have a bit of stiffness but I can sit for hours without a problem, I can lift things without worry, and it doesn’t hurt. Which makes the thought of having to shortly move that beast all worthwhile.
The futon was rolled up out in my garage. Last night was the village-wide spring clean-up. Just leave whatever furniture you want to get rid of on the curb and it will disappear. I moved the futon one last time and it was gone in the morning.