Nothing really mattress

One sign that you're not as young as you used to be is, you rarely spend a Saturday in the company of three or four other people, moving one of your friends in or out of some house or apartment.

The deal was always enticing: "We'll have beer in both refrigerators, and when we're through, we'll get some pizzas delivered."

So moving the furniture was not really tough, same as the trash bags full of sheets and towels, and the rest of the household belongings were not such a bear to bear.

But the mattress! You were smart if you volunteered to be the one taking the bedframe apart or putting it back together. That just took a couple of tools and you were ready to roll. 

But the mattress!

We always said, next time, let's do this first, because if you save it for last, everyone is worn out and 1/2 full of Heineken by the time three people grab hold of the Sealy and bend it in half to get it upstairs. And then it would come unbent, and someone would get squeezed in a doorframe in a way they did not enjoy very much.

Eventually, it all came together, and back then, no one seemed to notice that the mattress manufacturers were discontinuing putting handles of the sides of the big cumbersome sleep pad.

And they stopped doing it because we not using them in the intended manner!

No one reads owners' manuals on anything, but those handles were not intended to support the full weight of that Posture-Pedic. In no uncertain terms, Sealy, for example, says, “Don’t lift your mattress by the handles (if included). Handles are designed to position the mattress only.”

The other big mattress giants all say the same thing: the handles are to shift the mattress around, not to lug it up the stairs.

And if you keep reading, the instructions on newer mattresses say you don't need to flip them over like you used to, and they are now leaving the handles off so that every husband can say, "We can't flip the mattress, Doris; there are no handles, and plus, the game is coming on."

And one more thing: I checked with the police and the FBI: it is not illegal to remove the tag on your mattress. The manufacturers just put that on the tag to goof on you.