Aloft

Citizens of The Internet, Friends, Readers…Mom, Dad, I am here today to warn you of the little-known dangers of loft beds. We all know they can be dangerous for small children, of course. But have you ever seen a warning sticker that says: Please use caution when ascending/descending this ladder if you are 33 and have foolishly chosen to purchase this loft bed. You are too old, fat and decrepit to climb this ladder without killing yourself/making the whole contraption sway ominously.? Why is that? Does no one care about the plight of people like me?

You’re wondering where Mrs. Chicken is and why a very strange woman is writing in her space
why I bother referring to myself as a “woman” when I’m clearly stuck (at least mentally) in puberty.* how I got myself into this predicament. See, I’ve moved a lot in the last four years. I hate moving. I try not to, but under the circumstances** I seem to be helpless to do anything about it. This year (August 07- August 08) I set a record by living in four different places. There was a lot of downsizing. And also subsequent upsizing, depending on the space I was moving into. So I found myself in need of a bed and a desk this month. I had a full size mattress but wanted to maximize room space (because I am an arteest and I must have mah messy craft area perpetually filled with various half-finished projects stu-dee-OH). Too many hours on Craigslist resulted in an attack of the little known disorder: TIRCSHPOCA.*** Gradually, over the span of several weeks as my condition worsened, I experienced severe attacks of Poor Decision Making, one of the main symptoms of TIRCSHPOCA. At one point, my condition combined with a past trauma^* to give me the idea that buying this loft bed with a desk underneath would solve all of my problems and end world hunger while bringing about peace in the middle east.

*Other parts of me have also not made it out of puberty yet. For instance I’m 4′11″ and my figure is pretty much the same as it was when I was 12 (and not because I was an early bloomer).

**The Circumstances: I am relatively poor-ish. Well, determinately not rich, at least. I live in one of the most expensive areas of the country. I can’t afford my own place so I’m dependent on the vagaries of roommates. All of my roommates seem to eventually, a) move away b) get married c) leave the country. I like to think that this is mere chance and does not reflect on my qualities as a roommate, but that seems overly optimistic.

*** Temporary Insanity Resulting-from and Compounded-by Spending Hours Poring Over Craigslist Ads. Pronunciation: [TER-kish-PO-ka]

^*I was 12. My mom wouldn’t let me get one of those upper-bunk-with-a-desk-underneath beds even though I desperately wanted one. She insisted on buying a princess-y canopy bed set that looked like this. I showed her by immediately covering the walls with unicorn plaques and centerfold posters from Horse Illustrated, and then later, Sixteen magazine. [Is it just me, or does anyone else find it disturbing that 12-year-old girls are still putting posters of Johnny Depp on their walls 20 years later?]

What I’m left wondering is where all of the concerned friends and family who are supposed to talk one out of ridiculous ideas like this were hiding when I made this tragic decision. All I needed was one kind person to take me aside and quietly say, “Jess, let’s face it, you are old. You are old and your hiney is not getting any smaller. Gravity is no longer your friend. You can no longer go a whole night without having to wake up & pee. In fact a good night is one in which you only have to stagger to the bathroom once. You have trouble making it across a flat surface without losing your balance when you’re half-asleep. Plus when your bed sways it will be hard to tell if you’re experiencing a mild earthquake or just rolling over. Should a real earthquake occur, you will be the first to die.

Had that failed, a simple demonstration at a local playground would have made a world of difference. “Climb that play structure ladder… Well, of course it’s not that hard… now pretend you’re half asleep but climbing the ladder gave you leg cramps and so you climb back down and take Ibuprofin. Now climb back up. Pretend that the ceiling is only three feet above the rail, which you have to contort yourself to climb over. Now pretend it’s the middle of the night, you’re not really awake and making that squinty-confused face that your roommates used to tease you about first thing in the morning but your bladder is going to explode if you wait any longer to pee so you have to climb down the #&^%@ ladder. Faster, faster! Ooh! Yikes. Wow… that looked painful… Are you all right, or should I call an ambulance?”

Not one, single, concerned soul attempted to save me from myself and as a result, I have a good chance of ending up decapitated by the ceiling fan or in full-body traction. Don’t let this happen to your loved ones. Also, please send money. Or a very small staircase.

Jess is a poor excuse for a blogger who hasn’t posted in weeks even though she is not currently gestating anyone, raising anyone (except in a part-time, adjunct capacity), or staying up all night feeding a tiny voracious person every two hours while trying to recover from abdominal surgery/pushing a small human out of an area of my body that just does not seemed designed for that sort of activity; as it seems the rest of the blogging world is currently busy doing. She does not have children of her own so she occasionally tries to replicate the experience by acting immature. Thus, the subject of this post.