Reduce, Reuse, Recycle at Christmas (dedicated to Jace)

I was picking through some mail this morning (the kind that your hands can touch), enjoying a Christmas card or two, and discovered a strange Christmas Catalogue.  It was from the makers of the original orthopedic foam-rubber memory-mattress.

The catalogue was printed in Super-Gloss Hi-Def paper.

This fascinated me. 

Not just the glossy paper, but because these guys have a 'catalogue.'  What could the mattress folks possibly be selling, I wondered.  So I opened the catalogue to find page after page ... of footwear.

The space-age mattress industry has gone mad.  Why, I puzzled, have they made plushy slippers out of astronautical sleep foam? 

Then it struck me:  recycling.

When the space-age sleep foam industry first began, I took the company up on its original sleep-guarantee:  “Sleep on our mattress for 90 days for FREE and if you don’t agree you’ve acquired super powers including X-ray vision and the ability to Tango, return the mattress and—"

I returned the mattress.  Not only did I not acquire super powers, I did acquire muscle spasms from waking up in a space-age Memory Pit in the precise shape of my scoliosis.

Perhaps the company started putting to use decades of returned mattresses from spinal patients, for whom space-age foam meant each torqued disc and bone spur was frozen in its mis-alignment for a full eight hours of beauty-rest.

Finally! Returned mattresses have been reincarnated as footwear “in time for Christmas! Our line of winter slippers will put a spring in Grammy’s step. See page 2-7."  

Six pages of footwear.

And not just for sale.  For sale on credit:  the front page sported the sub-heading, “0% with 40 months to pay!”

I even spotted way down at the bottom, in a holly-berry font, the sentence fragment, "Christmas special on toys and accessories!”

Accessories? Had they fashioned purses and earrings from foam byproduct?

No, but I found exercise mats, teddy bears and a travel mattress in its own carrying case so holiday travelers can place a sheet of byproduct onto a guest-bed like a rubber sheath for bed wetters.

There were fluffy faux-fur sleep masks, neck rolls, lumbar supports, designer curtains and animal beds.  

"Fit for Fluffy, our feline loungers offer two styles:  the Uber-Deep-Dish-Decadance Resort and the Ecstasy Squirrel-Chaser, comfy enough to enduce the most pleasant dreams in your favorite pussy (available in tweed, brown-tweed, sage-tweed and squirrel-tweed).  *TODAY ONLY: personalize your lounger for only $9.99 -- up to 25 letters -- for FREE Christmas delivery!” 

They also performed hybrid experiments by splicing a toddler’s plushy with a neck roll:  “Use as sleep pillow or keep your blood wintry-warm with handy vampiric pull-tabs located near your jugulars to create an Arterial Teddy Wrap!”

Well, I guess someone had to be the guinea pig to wear the first mink stole.

Speaking of which, congrats again to Alexsandra on her job that recreates Green Space from the Post Big Dig Debacle.

And if any of my offspring are reading this, Mommy does not need plushy hello-kitty slippers that likely supported incontinent spinal patients back in 1992.

Although the yoga mats? 

Get me two:  for Katie-Ophelia and Juliet II.  The cats are weirdly zen these days.