I ran over a mattress

There is no lie, no exaggeration to the above statement. True story. Just another one of the random things I do.




This actually happened to me last week. I do fairly early morning work shifts, and need to get up at an unfathomable time in order to get to work. The unfathomable-ness is made even more so by the fact that rather than sleep in an extra 20-30 minutes and get to work right on time, I actually need to leave the house earlier than I have to, just to get parking. That’s just shithouse.



Because of the insane hour I’m driving at, needless to say I’m still a little sleepy when I get in the car; not dangerously so, of course, but even after washing my face, brushing my teeth and getting dressed, I’m still in a bit of a haze, with sleepy-land trailing slowly behind me.



And because it is so dark, well… there is not much on the road near my house, except for some other random poor soul in their car that also has to get up at an insane hour to get to work. Because not much happens, and it is relatively still and quiet at that time of the early morning, I was quite hazily staring into the far horizon of darkness as I drove down my street last week, not aware of what was coming up in front of me…



It was only when it came within a couple of metres of my impending headlights, that I noticed an unexpected white line. My immediate thought was “oh God, I’m going to hit something” but it was so close and I was travelling about 50 kms/h that it was too late to not hit it. As I reached it, braking, I realised what it was. However the brake stopped me just as I drove over it, and I was there, fully stopped, my car sitting on a freaking whole mattress in the middle of the road.



What made it worse was that a car had come out from a side street up ahead, and having seen me approach had to stop to give way. Only they stopped to watch me stop on a freaking mattress. How embarrassment. I had nothing else to do and accelerated hard, hoping to get off the mattress and away from the stupid situation as fast as I could.



I angrily called Hubbie as I sped away (emergency call it was). I wanted to warn him of the mattress so that he wouldn’t run over it on his way to work 30 minutes later. Huh. Like he would. As I told him he was like “you ran over a mattress? How come you didn’t see it?” As I angrily explained that it was dark and how it apparently had risen from the ground appearing out of nowhere, I could hear him smiling. Men.



Every time Hubbie sees a mattress now, he laughs.