Mattress-cide Part III: Goodbye, Cruel World!

So Thursday afternoon my brother and I threw out all three items, with all of the inner contents (clothes, reading material, etc.) stuffed into plastic bags. Since I’ve had the bed for so many years, I couldn’t remember how the deliverymen were able to maneuver it through my apartment’s narrow hallway and the sharp right turn which led to my bedroom so many years ago. After an hour of budging and grunting, we decided to use a crowbar and take the bed apart. Bugs spilled out onto the floor, scurrying around as my brother began a two-man killing spree. After an hour the bottoms of our shoes as well as the floor were covered in reddish-brownish-blackish stains of bed bug entrails, and we returned to the task at hand.

I’ve spent the last two days cleaning up, vacuuming, mopping, throwing out old unwanted stuff to make room for the items that were displaced when I threw out the bed and headboard. I’m still not finished because I needed to prepare for three midterm exams this week. Plus I went on three job interviews, so it was a busy week.

Two good things about bed bugs that most people don’t consider, they force minimalism upon their victims by forcing them to get rid of a lot of their furniture and other material possessions. The other good thing they do is force people to routinely keep their surroundings clean. I know I’m kind of a slob, and the only thing worse than seeing the bed bugs as I cleaned my bedroom this week was realizing just how absolutely filthy the room was. So the end results to having bed bugs are clean, modest surroundings, a rare concept in this town.

Maybe bed bugs are God’s little messengers, sent to America to tell us to stop being such pigs and that the acquisition of material possessions is not what life is all about. I have so many friends who immediately after getting their first apartments on their own whip out their credit cards and spend thousands of dollars on fancy furniture. Marble coffee tables, leather sofas, canopy beds, wall-to-wall carpets, all so they can show the rest of the world that they have taste and style. Once I even dated a young lady who, despite earning a measly $18,000 a year, not only bought (with her credit card) lots of beautiful furniture for her new DUMBO apartment, but even used her line of credit to hire an interior decorator to help her pick out a theme for her apartment as well as furniture and other assorted accoutrements. Have fun paying off that debt. This economy is getting worse and people are still spending as if it’s getting better.