The other day I stopped in a ‘fancy-pants-bed’ place that features beds with air bladders in them so you can make the bed as soft or as hard as you like, the left and right side are adjustable independently, so you needn’t suffer through the ‘goldilocks’ syndrome just because of your bedmates preference.
I laid myself out on this bed picked up the remote control and started pushing away…25 – 35-45 — all seemed the same to me — 50 – 55-60 – 65 okay now we’re cooking, the bed seems kinda firmer, hard even, so the salesman comes over “blah, blah, blah…digital…normal people’s sleep number is usually between 15 & 35…blah, blah, blah”
I swear I did a spit-take, normal people?, I let the question hang there, “ya know, ever day folks, they’re usually between 15 & 35”, I glanced at the controller in my hand that read 72, if you were to base my normality purely on my sleep number I’m a little over twice as not normal as those other folks…
As much as I love numbers, I think using numbers in this instance is rather unimaginative — why not use metaphoric symbols?
Hi my Name is Bill.. I’m a construction worker by day and a professional donkey wrestler at night..and everynight I sleep on a mattress as soft as a lambs behind.
I think that’s an improvement..don’t you?, and why 1 through 100, it only felt like there might have been 5 different perceivable settings; painfully soft, too soft, uncomfortable, not hard enough and too hard, but then again, I’m not normal.