Not sure what air mattress to buy? Maybe you should sleep on it first.

 It was a seemingly simple task. "Sydney Lynn," I said, "Could you please go pick out a small air-mattress for you and your sister to take turns sleeping on at Grandma's?" Savannah and I would spend the night with my mom Friday into Saturday for the funeral and Sydney would stay with me from Saturday into Sunday. Sydney disappeared into the bowels of Stuff-Mart while I was stationed with Savannah in the pits of hell (the photo kiosk). 

Finally finished, we dashed off to camping supplies to find Sydney. But where was she? "I'm in bedding," she announced over the phone. I reluctantly left the twenty dollar air-mattresses behind to join her only to be faced with overpriced options designed for dignitaries. "We don't need an inflatable headboard," I insisted while the girls described the PTSD that they suffer when their pillows slip off the air-mattress cliff into the great unknown.

"I wanted a twin," I stated. Sydney held up her phone. "Dad said that he's sick of you sleeping like a Taco Bell gordita in Grandpa's chair," she smiled. "She looks more like a chalupa," Savannah said helpfully. "Either way," Sydney explained, "we need a bed to accommodate two comfortably."

"The pump is built in?" I exclaimed, reading the box as I began filling out the loan papers to afford this monstrosity. Thinking longingly of the twenty dollar air-mattress in camping, I helped the girls wrestle this white water river raft into the cart.

Later, my mom and I watched, with no small amount of concern, while her living room disappeared as Savannah plugged in the pump and the air-mattress quickly inflated the space like foam insulation. Somersaults, back-flips, and assorted acrobatics were now employed to take us from one side of the room to the other. "I feel like the Princess & the Pea," I muttered to Savannah, realizing it would take very little effort on my part to touch my mother's ten foot tall ceiling from my prone position. "I meant for our presence here to be unobtrusive and subtle," I whispered to Savannah as my mother escaped to her bedroom; obviously soothed and comforted by our camping out in her living room like homeless squatters. 

"We could have just used sleeping bags," I complained, floating on my cloud of comfort. "You know what they're called, don't you?" Savannah asked me as I curled like a cantankerous kitten into a ball. "What?" I hissed. "Sleeping bags," Savannah repeated, "They're called nap-sacks!" "You know, then," I countered, "that a person who sleeps next to a close relative is called a nap-kin." 

I tried complaining about the air mattress to Sydney the next day but she insisted that I was blowing it out of proportion.

Again...it was a simple task.