The Klingon Bed

For years I've deprived myself of simple pleasures and comforts that ordinary people take for granted and some might say even essentials for living. As a poor college student and a struggling medical student and then a poor resident, I've deprived myself mainly of material goods over the years such as fancy clothes, nice furniture, a TV, sometimes food, and even a bed. I've been heckled over the years by all my friends regarding these deprivation issues, and one friend even asked me why I lived like a pauper. The answer is simple: because I WAS a pauper. Granted there were many people out there less fortunate than I, but when I don't make any money for 8 years and then go in to a huge debt for school loans, and then start making a piddley 2K/month with rent taking half of that, that doesn't mean I've struck it rich. I've never understood how many of my other friends lived so well, and they never understood how I lived the way I did. But whatever.

So for the past 8 years, I've slept on everything except a bed: a foam mattress placed on the floor in college, a practice that I learned from Gah, actually; a 2-inch thick foam mat that cost 40 bucks from Costco during med school; the floor, when I went on rotations. And when residency started, I moved up when I bought a Coleman air mattress. Still my friends ridiculed and still I resisted shelling out at least half-a-month's income to buy a bed. Besides, it's not like I would use it that much, anyway.

But with marriage and graduation from residency came the end of an era. I would finally break down and buy not only a bed, but a super state-of-the art bed that cost a month's salary as a resident. After sleeping on this thing for 2 nights, I realised how achy I actually use to be after waking up on everything else. A far cry from the cold hard Klingon-type beds I was accustomed to.