Cabin Story

A post over at The Estate Store reminded me of a funny story, so I thought I'd post it here (too):

I come from a family of short people, and am short myself. One summer we needed a “new” hide-a-bed for the cabin. We found one in the classifieds, hauled it out to the lake by boat (hide-a-beds are *heavy*… transporting them by boat is… um… entertaining), and took the casters off the bottom so that it would be comfortable to sit on. That night, when we went to use it as a bed, we found the mattress *highly* uncomfortable! A few weeks later we found another hide-a-bed in the classifieds. This time we were “smart”, and checked out how the mattress was before hauling it all the way to the lake by boat. It was great, so we paid, transported it, and took the casters off so we could sit comfortably. That night, we discovered that the mattress was once again as uncomfortable as the first! What was wrong? It had been fine when we tested it!?!?!!! Then it dawned on us that the casters changed the height not only for sitting, but for the head of the bed when it was pulled out!!!

Come to think of it, maybe we replaced the regular legs with castors so that it would (a) be shorter, and (b) be easier to move around… because now we have lengths of two-by-fours between the couches and casters. (We’re classy folks, especially at the lake.)

If you ever want an uncomfortable night’s rest (or need to deal with an unwanted house-guest), try sleeping on a hide-a-bed whose head end has been lowered by several inches. And no, you can’t just swap head and foot ends, because the foot end doesn’t have much in the way of support. We tried that too.