Waterbeds & Other Bad Ideas
My take on some relics of the 1970s & '80s
Okay, maybe the waterbed wasn’t a bad idea. It was originally invented in the 1800s by a doctor to prevent bed sores in comatose and paralyzed patients. That’s a good idea. The bad happened about a hundred years later, when a college student designed the modern waterbed in 1968 and people started buying them for their homes.
And by “people” I mean single, able-bodied, probably mustachioed men who wanted to help sexually liberate the ladies (or dudes, if that was his thing) and get his groove on. Advertisements in the ‘70s linked waterbeds with sexual experimentation, which clearly worked like a charm because sales soared. Then they went from bachelor pad fixtures to suburban parent’s bedrooms when sales peaked in the 1980s.
One of my friend’s parents had a waterbed that looked like this majestic beaut:
I thought the shelves were awesome— more functional than those decorative metal headboards typically attached to normal beds— and I assumed anyone who had one of these bad boys must’ve been rich.
Turned out I was kind of right. One of the reasons waterbeds stopped being popular was the high cost of maintenance. I’m sure some of you remember what it was like: heating or cooling the water for different seasons, draining it and disassembling it when you had to move, property damage if there was a leak or from the weight of a thick wooden bed frame holding an enormous sack of water. Landlords started banning waterbeds from their rentals and who could blame them?
Wicker furniture was all over the place in the ‘70s and ‘80s and I love-hated it. Most wicker styles at the time gave homes the cool, bohemian look or the tropical island look—both styles I coveted because I grew up embarrassed of how my house was decorated (but that’s a long-ass story for another time). Wicker added a natural element to homes, communicating your environmentalism in the ‘70s and helping offset all the vivid colors that were popular in the ‘80s.
But as soon as I tried to get comfy on one of those wicker sofas or chairs at someone else’s house, a natural fiber or reed jutting out would stab my leg or arm, eventually spurring a subtle phobia. I began to wince every time I was expected to sit on wicker furniture, and that lasted for as long as wicker furniture was popular.
Al Green’s face says a twig is stabbing him in the ass but he knows he looks groovy so “no pain, no gain”.
And who started the trend of molding meals into bizarre unnatural shapes? I’d like to ask them a few questions, namely about their mental health.
From what gelatinous hell did this crawl out of?
What were our parents and grandparents thinking when they hopped on that bandwagon—that these frankenfoods would get us to eat our fish and vegetables?
It should be outlawed to link the words “tuna” and “mousse”.
I’m thankful nobody in my family made these monstrosities. The closest thing I can think of would be those neon-colored Jello molds with all the random fruit segments floating in it. Apparently, the adults in my family knew a tuna-shaped tuna salad would be the least appetizing way to present a meal to us kids. I didn’t and never will want to eat a face.
I was raised by a single dad. When I was a toddler he used to take me to his friend Marty's house and they’d drink and listen to music. I'd sit in Marty's bedroom on his waterbed and watch whatever was on PBS at the time, Sesame Street, Electric Company etc ( it was the 70s). I remember his water bed was made of this black vinyl/rubber-like material and was very wobbly which made it fun to roll back and forth like being in the ocean and being pushed into the shore by a small wave and then pulled out again. One day I rolled too far an got stuck between the mattress and the wooden bed frame and stayed there until my dad came in to check on me. To this day he tells me it is the single funniest thing he's ever seen in his life, and he's 83 years old.
I swear this is true. I totally forgot that I had a waterbed as a kid until reading this. Totally. Completely. Forgot. I vaguely recall the whole family going to the bed store to get waterbeds. I definitely recall what a pain it was to fill them with water from a hose and all that. I remember you had to “burp” them occasionally. I remember feeling like I was riding a wave once during an earthquake. And then the waterbed was gone. I don’t remember when. Was it when I came from college after freshman year? After graduation? Did it remain at my parent’s house for another decade? No clue.