Cots

We’re sleeping on cots now—part of our “make the most of living in a one-room schoolhouse” program. Our new cots fold up, stow nicely into nylon zip totes, and provide room for storage underneath. Sleeping on the floor—which we used to do—does jack for increasing your available storage space.

Cots have been standard gear forever, whereas Sealy Posturepedic or Tempur Pedic or Whatever Pedic are upstarts and rogues.

Prabhupada slept on a cot at the Radha-Damodar temple ashram during the early 1960s while he was writing the First Canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam.

I happily announced our new and improved Sadhu Pedic sleeping arrangements to a friend. He has a big house—lots of bedrooms with actual beds in them.

“Cots?” he said, as if I’d told him we were sleeping on wood shavings and cinder blocks. “For me, ‘cot’ means  ‘extreme discomfort’.”

Just the opposite is true for me. When I was growing up, my grandparents visited us every Christmas. Grandpa slept in my bed, and I slept on a cot. Over the years, I came to associate the thrilled anticipation of a magical visit from Santa Claus with the sensation of sleeping on a cot.

The other night my wife was assembling her cot, while I watched, exhausted and way too sleepy to help out. She wasn’t having an easy time of it. Reminded me of an old Donald Duck cartoon.