Sleeping with the Enemy
by Michael Schaffer

I’ve been working on a story about beds. It turns out that in the last decade, sales of queen-sized beds for the first time exceeded those of twin beds–a product of bigger houses, bigger people, and maybe some changes in ideas about sex (people are less concerned that promoting their teenagers to double-wide beds is an invitation to bedroom nookie than they must have been back when the married Ricky and Lucy Ricardo slept in separate twin beds).

Bed size can be a cause of apparently unrelated phenomena as well as result of them. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that beds have also gotten thicker, with mattresses and box springs balooning from a standard eight inches to sizes of up to 20 inches thick. Meantime, years of pet-owner surveys have shown how the dog that lived in the back yard is more and more likely to rest his head on that same bed. And modern nutrition means dogs live longer than ever. Combine these things, and what do you get? An increase in hip and leg problems for dogs who spend years leaping daily from modern America’s gargantuan beds. Luckily, there’s a solution: The journal piece also reported that bed stairs were among the fastest-growing products in the pet retail sector.