The king single bed is the best mattress size ever conceived. You can keep your stubby double bed and your bloated queen bed; the king single is all a person ever needs. I have slept on every kind of bed in every different size, but nothing has played a constituent role in my life more than a king single bed.
What the heck am I talking about? I know, I sound crazy, spruiking the benefits of a… mattress size? Before you call the men in white suits to come scoop me away, let me tell you a little story.
Growing pains.
When I was a child, I slept on the top bed of a bunk; below me was my younger sister. We shared a room peacefully until I was 11 when I started to complained daily about a crawling pain in my legs and arms. I was so concerned I started to make my self sick with worry. Why was I feeling this? Was it a rare disease from space? Maybe my math teacher had a mysterious strain of flu and gave it to me when he marked my test?
My loving mother (bless her) would laugh at me, say that I was being dramatic, and it was only growing pains. Growin pains? What the? My rapidly changing man-child body was an awkwardly hilarious disaster for all around me as I bumped into things constantly, not used to my expanded extremities.
In the space of four months, I went from a chubby little boy who fit snugly in a single bed, to a gangly 6 foot something teenager. The rapid growth scarred my body with stretch marks, which are still visible today.
Graciously, before the onset of this change, I was given my own room, and we went bed shopping. An uninterested and constantly moody teenager was probably not the funnest shopping partner in the world, but still, my mother persisted as we hopped from Domayne to Harvey Norman, on a quest to find the perfect bed for her rapidly expanding son.
She was insistent on a double bed. On the outset, this size looked like the logical choice, double the width of my current bed, not too expensive and a popular size amongst teenagers, according to the teenaged salesperson. My mum was sold, myself not so much.
In my short career of growing taller, I had managed to crack the six foot two mark, and as such, as I lay on a double bed in the showroom, surrounded by my parents and a sweating salesperson, I realized it was too big. But I didn’t say anything, I kept quiet, and for years I slept diagonally on a double bed, too afraid to offend my mum, as they say, don’t bite the hand that feeds you!
King-sized revelations
I wasn’t even an adult, but I didn’t fit in my supposedly adult-sized bed. The ensemble was heavy and took up an awkward amount of space in my room. When I left home for university, I knew I needed to buy a new bed, and I thought queen-sized must be the way to go; after all, it was a double but longer, just what I needed. Or so I thought.
After some number crunching, doubt began to creep into my mind. A queen-sized bed is too big for my university accommodation. I was too poor to pay someone to deliver a bulky mattress. Was I doomed to live a life of awkward sleep?
For months, I tried to adjust to uni life, all while sleeping on an air mattress. Oh, what fun it was to remember scores of critical information while waking up on the hard ground after the mattress had deflated in the night. It was pretty grim, but when I think back on it, that pretty much summed up university.
Big (tax) break
An eye-opening first semester had drawn to a close, and I was free to wander the city streets and try and process some of the madness I had witnessed. Shortly after that, I realized it was futile and went to the mall. Good choice, it was a welcome respite from the bitter winter that had recently snuck in.
The heaters were pumping as hard as the sickly sweet love ballads coming from the stero system, it’s 11:30 in the morning, and the mall is swarming with shoppers. I treat myself to a donut and start to wander aimlessly, enjoying the strange juxtaposition of me, the poor uni student, and the mall, a shining temple of consumerism. Before I can get too deep and arty, a sign out the front of a department store catches my eye;
‘TAX TIME SALE: %50 OFF ALL MATTRESSES AND ENSEMBLES ‘
I browse the displays; queen beds stretch out before me. Even with the sales, these beds are too expensive, to.. excessive. And then I see it. The Rialto king single bed. This bed is what I had been missing my entire life. A bed that was comfortable long, while not being fat on the sides. I was about to cry in desperation at my lack of funds until the sign out the front replayed in bold font across my brain:
‘TAX TIME SALE”
It’s a sale, and its tax time. Its tax time. TAX TIME! Of course! My tax refund had come in for the previous year, it wasn’t much, but it was enough to buy the mattress. Some young men buy expensive cars, and others just want a good night’s sleep and buy a Sealy mattress instead. Yeah, I know I’m very uncool.
My love affair with this sized mattress grew deeper when I was able to fit it into my Camry and managed to get it home and set it up by myself. That night I had the best sleep of my ife, and the rest is history.
In a world where bigger is better, the king single is an interesting idea — something big, mixed with a healthy dose of restraint. King single beds are the perfect bed for a teenager, a single adult or even a couple who are severely strapped for cash (My girlfriend and I shared a king single for two years, and yes, we are still together) When it comes time to upgrade your mattress or ensemble, spare a thought to the king single, the king of the bed sizes.