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That person was my husband.

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The year was 1984. I had met and married my husband in 6 days. (He was on leave from the Marine Corps, had to be back on base in North Carolina in a week and was determined to take me with him.) I stuffed clothes, shoes and jewelry in black trash bags ..crammed as much as I could in the back of his Datsun 280ZX and off we went.

I’d just turned 20 and was journeying into the unknown. Married to a man I hardly knew, leaving home for a brand new life. His family was shocked. My mother was hysterical. I was young and in love… life was good!

Until we pulled into his rental bachelor pad down south. The house was small… and bright turquoise. Inside and out. Not his color of choice, but he didn’t change it either which speaks volumes. It had all the prerequisite bachelor ecoutrements…. plywood and cement blocks entertainment center, mismatched thrift store chairs, beach towels in the bathroom. But as awful as that was? I was undeterred. Men are works in progress, I could rebuild him.

And then I walked into the bedroom.

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Not my picture, but it could be. I ignored the fact my man only had one pot and 2 plates in his kitchen cupboard. I turned a blind eye to the boot stand made from a power line wooden spool. I shrugged off the dented foot locker coffee table. But a waterbed? That I would actually have to sleep on? That was a bridge too far.

The husband didn’t mind with me filling his kitchen and bathroom with appropriate items. He encouraged me to buy new furniture and paint the walls a less objectionable color. But he loved that abominable liquid monstrosity and refused to give it up.

We lived in the sea sickness inducing bachelor pad for 8 months and then bought our first home. It was considerably larger than his extremely shabby and not so chic rental abode so we purchased a dining room set, an office suite and den furniture. We built a deck and loaded it with porch furniture, a fire pit and a grill. It was great! Until I realized we had run out of money before we reached the bedroom.

I spent another year sleeping on that horrible rubber life raft but my husband still balked every time I broached the subject of replacing it. I dreaded going to sleep at night. Every time the husband rolled over, a wave rippled under me. It was bizarre.

And then one night, Morpheus smiled upon me.

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No, not that one.

The God of Sleep heard my prayers and we both woke up shivering at 3:00am. For those who don’t know, you can’t just fill a waterbed and call it good. There’s a heating mechanism under the mattress that keeps the water warm. You can’t sleep on cold water, it will draw out your body heat in an attempt to level the temperature difference. And that’s just what the last vestige of my husband’s bachelorhood did.

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The heater broke, the water temperature dropped and we were shivering popsicles by morning. I was ecstatic! The husband was bereft. I did a happy dance of epic proportions. The husband may have wept.

We stripped the bed, siphoned out the water…. not a small task…. and discovered that not only had the heater ceased to heat, it had completely burned out and scorched the wooden frame beneath, dropping burnt ash on the carpet. I suppose being burned to death by a waterbed is technically impossible since the flames would eventually be extinguished by the burst of water…. but that’s a wood fire- burning rubber- electrical nightmare I’d rather not be slumbering on thank you very much.

The waterbed went bye bye and I said good riddance. I really wish I could find the picture I took of the husband that morning. (pre digital so there’s no telling where it could be) We were curling up the rubber mattress to push the last bit of water out the hose and he was sitting in the corner, desolate, head in hand… watching the last drop (literally) of his single life go out the window (literally).

Good times.

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36 thoughts on “That person was my husband.”

  1. My friend had one and offered to let me and my GF (eventually my first wife) stay at his place while he was out of town. I was excited for some sexy time on the water bed. It sucked! Couldn’t get any traction at all.

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  2. I can’t stop laughing! I’m about 6 years behind me. But my husband, then, was 8 years older! He was single with a waterbed. Lol I was newly married at 19. I’ll be darn if I had to sleep in “waves” (even bought a mattress with baffles to ease the seasickness). What changed? I got pregnant and very sick…that’s when he had enough! I’ll never forget the words I learned from my Dad when he filled up our waterbed at home in 1985. I still laugh at that.

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  3. You mad impetuous fool! I love your take on the blessing of your marriage. I didn’t make a proposal, it was a notification to her father, something like “You know I’m going to marry your daughter”. He was a bit distraught, so I helped him out with a little reassurance. This was something like “I will be your son and you will love me” Right, right and right, how do I do it? By accepting that I was going to have to prove it. Thirty six years in June and I’m proving it (Almost) every day.

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  5. We had a waterbed when I was pregnant with Megann. I tried using a regular crib mattress. nope. She wasn’t having it. So I had to buy a WATERBED crib mattress. What a pain but hey, she slept thru the night the first night!

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      1. yup. She would not sleep unless she was in my bed with me. Bought the crib mattress and she slept thru the night. I was amazed.

        There was a company here in the area that was REALLY big and sold a lot. My late brother used to haul for them.

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  7. I just got my married life PTSD back…….when I was preggers with my youngest my stupid ex was gifted a king waterbed by my even dumber oldest SIL. It was okay for the first trimester, but at almost nine months I’d list over to the left…..it was my 10 1/2 soon to be born son. But my back was killing me and he wouldn’t get rid of it. I clearly remember chewing out my ex SIL for not asking me as well as my stupid ex if we wanted that water filled monstrosity. And the idiot wouldn’t give it up. So I made several holes in the rubber and let it drain…yes it was evil and malicious but I was nine months pregnant and in a very, very bad mood…😈. We eventually bought a proper bedroom set. Then three years later I divorced the dude.

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  9. My wife never complained about the waterbed. Baffles, built-in heater–not under the mattress, but inside it. I think she loved it more than I did. What did it in was actually the cats. Two of them had a fight on it, using their back claws to gain purchase to smack the other upside the head. Too many tiny holes to fix. But my wife, genius that she was, cut the mattress top off and we used it as a groudsheet for our tenting trips. Best groundsheet ever. Especially the night at the Winnipeg Folk Festival when it poured for hours, and flooded the whole place. When we woke up and looked outside, everyone else was six inches deep in water, everything in their tents soaked, including dleeping bags. Ant then there was us. Because the waterbed mattress filled the whole tent, everything of ours was inside our “groudsheet.” We were Sahara Desert dry.

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  10. I knew many people with such furniture. The hydro-line spool dining table, bricks and boards book cases and plastic milk crates for just about anything else. Luckily I only slept on a water bed once. It was once too many times for me. I don’t know how you survived it as long as you did.

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  12. This is so funny! My Dad and his second wife had one and my step sister had one. I never liked it, but I was a kid so it really didn’t bother me. But when my grandparents came to visit for a weekend, they had to sleep in my stepsister’s water bed; oh the jokes and complaints were hilarious.

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  15. Pingback: Aging gracefully … at least sometimes: April 10 – A Silly Place

  16. Amen, sistah. I slept on a waterbed for a couple of years because my ex owned one when we met. I can’t believe we actually dragged a garden hose into the bedroom for something non-kinky. I hated that thing and was equally glad when she gave it up.

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