Over the summer we went to New York City for my son’s 18th birthday. At the Neo-Futurarium theatre, I caught a play, while the others were shopping “obsessively”. It was called, “Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind.”
In it a woman did a monologue – “An ode to her bra, the one that never quite fit”. She said, “Ladies, is one of your bras a misfit? Does it just never quite feel right but you’ve never had the will to get rid of it – so the only time you wear it is when the others are in the wash?” Women throughout the theatre nodded their heads in sympathy and agreement.
She then holds up a bra. “I have one of those bras too and this is it!” She begins to speak to the bra – a stirring rant about how we’ve walked together for so long, but now we are going our separate ways and I am never going to suffer your discomforts again.
Then all of a sudden her little speech turned into a rousing call to action. “Ladies, how many of you are suffering from one of those bras RIGHT NOW?!” A few women nodded their heads as she continued. “It’s time to take it off. Take it off! Now! Throw it onto the stage where it will join my bra in never making any female suffer again. Go ahead, do it!”
I looked around the 150-person theater, half of them were women. I’m thinking, is this really going to happen? Hell, I was pumped. I quickly put both my hands on my chest wishing that I had a bra on me – lol. I didn’t, but if I did – snap, pop, pull and on the stage it would go!
Sure enough, arms disappear inside T-shirts, adjustments ensued, right arm pops back out, reaches into left sleeve and pulls that bra through the sleeve. A woman twirls it around her head and her newly rejected bra sails through the air and lands on the stage. Another woman across the room does the exact same thing. So, 2 out of the 75 women, passionately stepped out of their comfort zone (or should I say uncomfortable zone) and defied the norm. An act that in most circumstances would be considered, shall we say, highly inappropriate.
So, 2 out of 75 that roughly rounds up to 3%. This goes to show you, like many things in life, that a small percentage of people will do HIGHLY erratic things and violate the norms. What kind of norms? All kinds of norms – clothing, work hours, choice of profession, manners, humour, acts of terrorism, sleep routine, camping out for 4 days to get tickets for their favourite band, or even shopping factory direct for their next mattress.
Why suffer through an uncomfortable mattress?
You know what I say, “buy a good mattress and a good bra because when you take one off, you are laying on the other”. I mean they both support you and are intended to keep you better aligned (more comfortable), so why not take the time to do it right.
And what does my thoughtful and beautiful wife think about all of this? Besides thinking that I am nuts for making this connection, she now thinks its obvious. She said, “the majority of women probably take more time to choose a proper fitting bra, than a much more expensive item, like a mattress”.
She also said, “women hate shopping for bras, and you can never find the right one because different styles always fit differently”. Hmmm… that sounds a lot like mattress shopping to me.
People hate shopping for mattresses because it’s so confusing and the big mattress makers have this strategy of offering different models to different stores so that consumers could never make a good comparison, even if they could tear the cover off and look inside. That’s why we say, you should buy your next mattress from the inside out. What’s Inside Matters!
The norm for buying a mattress is to go out to furniture or mattress stores and to eventually pick one based on the cover, the advertising, what is on sale or what the salesperson really thinks is the “Best Value”. Don’t do it! Don’t fall into that trap.
The biggest mattress complaint we hear in our factory direct showroom, every week, is that my 20 year mattress has only lasted 3 years. And just like that old uncomfortable bra, people keep using their uncomfortable mattress long after they should have thrown it away. Even though they wake up with a sore back or stiff muscles, they continue as if that was the norm.
However, the difference between an old bra and a mattress is that you only use the ill-fitting bra when the others are in the wash – you use your mattress every single night. That is unless you split your night between the bed and the couch. In some cases people have suggested that they decided to give foam a try, after sleeping more comfortably on their couch’s foam cushions than on their spring bed.
Another problem with mattress selection is buying a mattress that is too soft or too hard, according to studies – 68% of the population does that. I wonder how many women buy bras that don’t fit just right?
We use Ergocheck Pressure Testing (the Latest in Sleep Technology) to determine what firmness is right for you and your partner on each side of the bed. Even though he may not know the discomfort of wearing a bra, I am sure that, he too feels the discomfort from sleeping on a bad mattress.
Final Word
What we do is not the norm. Actually it is far from ordinary. We don’t expect everyone to come in to see us; however, the 3% that do, will be greeted with open arms, lots of information (on how mattresses are made) and with more options and customization than they will ever find, even if they visited 100 mattress stores – in person or online.
Better by learning about the options that will allow you to do so.
Sincerely,
R.C. (Bob) Dimas
Be the best that you can be by doing whatever is necessary to improve the quality of your sleep!
Getting in sync with your body’s natural sleep/wake cycle is the key to good sleep. You will feel more refreshed and energized.
