a bed of lies

I like to think of myself as a fairly smart guy. You know: I can calculate tips of varying percentages without needing a calculator, I don't fall asleep before finishing a New Yorker article, I never use more than one exclamation mark at a time -- that sort of thing. But it seems my wits are no good when pared against cunning mattress salesmen -- or one cunning mattress salesman somewhere in the East Bay, to be specific.

To make a long story short, I found out today that, for the past six years, I've been sleeping on a full-size mattress when I thought I was sleeping on a queen.

That's right, I measured my mattress today (because it's about time we finally get it off the floor and put it on a bed frame, don't you think?) And guess what? My mattress guy pulled the old switcheroo! And I didn't notice for six years!

Oh, sure, go on. Laugh. Ask me why I didn't get out the measuring tape a long time ago -- like when I first bought queen-size sheets and they were just a little bit too big for the bed? Why haven't I ever wondered why my feet stick out over the bottom of the bed at night? Why did it take me six years to figure out that I got duped by a mattress salesman?

I assure you, there are good answers to all of those questions. For instance, imagining one's self to be taller than reality might have something to do with it. But let me ask you something: Has it really come to this? Do people really get out the measuring tape and verify that their mattress is indeed the size that the package says it is?

I have so, so much to learn.

The worst part is, the bed was a decent size for the Wife and I yesterday. Now it feels like we're sharing a coffin.

"One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, especially those whose skill is literary, find no opportunity for the independent exercise of their talents, but have to hire themselves out to rich corporations directed by Philistines, who insist upon their producing what they themselves regard as pernicious nonsense.

"If you were to inquire among journalists in either England or America whether they believed in the policy of the newspaper for which they worked, you would find, I believe, that only a small minority do so; the rest, for the sake of livelihood, prostitute their skill to purposes which they believe to be harmful.

"Such work cannot bring any real satisfaction, and in the course of reconciling himself to the doing of it, a man has to make himself so cynical that he can no longer derive whole-hearted satisfaction from anything whatever.

"I cannot condemn men who undertake work of this sort, since starvation is too serious an alternative, but I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to a man's constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account.

"Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect."

-- Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
    (Paragraph breaks are mine.)