Attention Must Be Paid?

I was having one of those days. A cold spell grinding down, been in the house too long, ready to claw at the drywall just to get out. So I got in my car with a vague destination, to take care of a few things that had been nattering around in the back of my head.

One was to price a new mattress for my “exercise” bed (actually Husband’s old trundle bed which, in the furniture roulette, had finally been move downstairs into the living room when we got a new bed for our room a couple years back). I figured that 30-some years was about as long as you can expect a mattress to hold out before it either disintegrated or became a hammock, but finding a replacement was not as easy a task as one would think. The mattress had to be narrow enough to fit inside the old-fashioned metal frame (the standard “twin” width is 38”, or so I learned, and the trundle bed mattresses can be 33” or 36”), firm enough to allow me to do my exercises, on those days when I don’t want to do them on the floor, yet not so rock-hard that I can’t take a nap on it on those days when I need a nap (or a place to ice my back, do deep breathing exercises, etc.).

So I stopped into one of our local bedding stores. Now, these places are like heaven to me. Some people hang their heads out the window like dogs whenever they pass an auto dealership. Some (OK, me included) are magnetically drawn into bookstores. But if I had to imagine heaven, it would be acres and acres of soft, plushy mattresses - surrounded by books, of course.

My dream didn’t include the salesman.

He was an older gentleman – from the distance of the front door to the middle of the showroom I pegged him in his early 60s but as I walked closer his drawn face looked not just older – eyes sunken and pouched – but like he either was or had been seriously ill.

And it turned out to be both. After he pointed me toward the options in trundle bed mattresses (not many) he continued his sales pitch by telling me he was dead tired and taking too much aspirin. He was getting over a cold. He’d taken a round of chemo recently for colon cancer and had some other aches and pains from some other surgeries and had only slept two hours the night before.

Ironic, in a store full of beds, he couldn’t get any sleep.

He told me that he was going to demand they cut him back to four days, because six was just too many. He was 62 and could retire now if he wanted, but he was holding out to 65 so he could get more money. He said he’d been out on disability for a while and I told him (what I could get in edgewise) about my own experiences with the program. Then his saga really began. (you know those people, the ones who say, “Well, you think THAT’s bad…let me tell you about my Aunt Matilda and her hemorrhoids…”) He told me about his brother, who’d been a colorist at a hair salon. A marathon runner, fit as a fiddle. He’d been the main source of income in his family for years, since his wife, who worked for IBM, had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t work any more. And one day he simply collapsed at the salon. He’d developed some sort of poisoning from exposure to the chemicals, and it resulted in a rare disease that was a lot like multiple sclerosis, plus extreme multiple chemical sensitivities. It was so bad he had to have a HEPA filter in every room. Within two years, the steroids had ruined his body. Eventually he and his wife had to move out of our lovely Hudson Valley, because he couldn’t handle the stagnant air and the allergens here, so his options were either by an ocean or in the mountains. He opted for a place in Florida. Essentially, he became a boy in a bubble. Visitors to his scrupulously clean house had to first shower and then change into special clothing before entering.

I really didn’t want to hear another story where someone else has it worse so I should be grateful, but the writer in me found him so fascinating that it was tough to leave. But eventually my own aches and pains from standing in one place for so long got to me so I made the classic moves to leave – putting on the gloves, getting out the keys – but he kept on talking. Even though I said I had to leave and it was nice meeting him, he kept talking. As I moved closer and closer to the door, he kept talking.

And finally when I was at the door did it dawn on him that I was actually leaving, this (probably) one bit of human contact he’d had for hours, maybe all day (for who shops for mattresses on a Friday?).

And out came the first personal question he’d asked me since I, a potential customer, walked into his life.

“What’s your name?” he said.

I told him.

“Nice to meet you,” he said.

And with my hand on the door I wanted to suggest that after I left, he might want to lock up for an hour or so and take a nap.

But I was afraid that this would start him on another round of telling me even more of his troubles and I already knew more about the state of his colon than anyone, even his doctor, had a right to.

And driving home, I didn’t feel better about myself knowing that someone else had it worse. I just felt bad for him and his brother, and worse for me. The only thing I felt good about was getting away from him so I wouldn’t have to look into his near-death eyes and hear any more of his heart-wrenching story and get sucked into someone else’s tragedy when I couldn’t even handle my own.

And doubtful I’m going back there to buy a mattress from him, either.

Right now I just can’t afford it.