The summer before my thesis semester, I visited a friend in Pittsburg who was just starting graduate school. As two students, the sleeping accommodation in his spartan apartment was a green foam camping pad on the hardwood floors.
No problem, I had spent most of my undergraduate career sleeping on the concrete floors of Wurster Hall because I was a bit insane ’bout that studio life.
This thin inflatable foam pad was a revelation. You’d bottom out if you rolled on to your side, but it was as comfortable as a normal mattress when I stayed on my back.
A couple years later, we tried camping as a hobby and bought a couple of these pads for ourselves. The camping kick only lasted a few months, but we’ve kept them around for the past decade. At $60 a piece, this was a significant purchase in the middle of the Great Recession and they held nostalgic significance.
One can thank COVID for their return to prominence. After reading Guts, our daughter wanted to have a slumber party. With no real options, we held a family slumber party in the spare bedroom. She enjoyed it so much that we repeated it every weekend for a couple months, sleeping on these thin air mattresses every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night.
The world has changed a bit from those days as a grad student, but occasionally I catch glimpses that self in the moment.
Now it’s the four of us, navigating a suddenly claustrophobic world.