Once Upon A Mattress

I suffer from a condition that I have named Isolated Non-Linear Incremental Magical Thinking (INLIMT).

It has elements of Outcome Comprehension Deficit, close neurological ties with what we call “instinct” and also depends heavily on huge dollops of stupid.

People remember difficult or complex ideas more easily if they can link them to a narrative, so let me illustrate INLIMT in action.

If you are not a local to Sydney, you may not be aware that it has been raining here without significant pause, since 1993.

During this unrelenting deluge, I needed to throw out a mattress. We were having a house guest and we needed to get the old mattress out and a new mattress in. The old mattress came to us along with a divan base that we actually wanted. Emergency Contact and I took the mattress as a reciprocal favour to the person who was giving us the bed base. No-one involved ever really considered the mattress a properly usable piece of equipment. It just had to be dealt with at some time and the time had finally come. (The mattress had been sitting there in the spare room, quietly wafting its special odours in a limited area, for months.)

In a short break in the weather, I dragged the mattress out to the ute and chucked it in the back. Now, this is where we start to see some INLIMT.

I then walked away. You see, the non-linear, incremental, magical bit had kicked in. I had achieved the most important thing - getting the mattress out of the house. I was aware that the next step had not been considered but that was overridden by the short term success. This is how gambling starts.

What another part of my brain was telling me was that someone would nick it. There was precedence. Once, when I was moving house, I came out the front with another load for the back of my moving truck, to see two guys loading my bed onto their truck. Our short exchange went something like,

“Oh, sorry mate. Thought it was hard-rubbish night.”

“Something’s a load of crap here mate, and it’s not my bed.”

That bed was really pretty new and in good condition. This single mattress was, as I have mentioned, starting to frighten children. But, I’ve got it out of the house and onto the back of the ute where it is going to be stolen overnight and the fresh, crisp sheets on the new mattress inside are a welcoming sight for the houseguest and everything is peachy. INLIMT.

Overnight it went back to chucking it down. For non-Aus readers, that’s cats and dogs. (I heard recently that ‘raining cats and dogs' came about as a saying because it used to actually happen. When houses had thatched rooves, the semi domesticated animals could make their homes in the thatching and if it rained hard enough, it would drive them out. I don’t know how true that is.) Anyway, it bucketed down.

I went out the next morning to see four and half metric tonne of mattress, sagging over the lockup box in the ute. Great. No-one’s going to steal that now… hey, maybe a good wash was what it needed. Maybe if I just drive it around and sort of give it a blow dry, it will come up fresh as a daisy and then someone will steal it. Yeah, INLIMT.

So I drove around for a week with this sodden monstrosity weighing down the back of the truck. Did it stop raining for one second during that week? Nup. Was I the object of much jocularity at work as I drove into the car park, day after day, with a completely uncovered fabric mattress in the back of a utility that was starting to resemble a mobile swamp? Yep.

When I’d moan about it, Emergency Contact would say, “Chuck it in some park somewhere at night. Live a little.”

My colleague Stick, said, “C’mon, chuck it under a bridge somewhere. It’ll be hobo’s Christmas. It’s irresponsible not to.”

But I’m not like that. Last Saturday, having finally lost patience with the thieves in my area, I drove to the tip. It was a perfect, sunny day and I could see the mattress drying nicely in my rear-vision mirror, but I was committed. When I got there, the lady at the weigh-station saw that I had a mattress, and with eagle eyes also spotted the little foam one underneath that I had ‘forgotten’ about, and took my charge card.

On my way back out, she stung me for $50 for the joy of getting rid of some wet fabric with some rusty springs suspended in it. Fifty freakin’ bucks!

See, now it’s not just me suffering from INLIMT here. How on earth do they expect to discourage illegal dumping when they’re pricing waste management like that?