The Bad Karma Bed

When we first moved to this area a couple of years ago, RWT’s sister lived with us for about nine months until she found a good job, an apartment and some roommates. She arrived with only the possessions that could fit in her vintage BMW (which she totaled within two months of her arrival) and immediately started looking for a bed.

She quickly found a queen-size mattress set with frame for a good price on craigslist and made arrangements to purchase it. RWT took her in our “big” car to pick up the bed from a fifth floor apartment in a building with no freight elevator. They lugged the box-spring down the stairs and loaded it on the car and had just made it down to the parking lot with the mattress when they saw the Bed Owner gesturing frantically to someone standing next to our car.

It turns out that the Bed Owner had already promised the mattress set to someone else (and taken their payment check!) but then thought they were not going to ever pick it up. Actually, the First Buyer had been busy arranging to rent a U-Haul to move the bed and, in fact, the U-Haul was sitting right next to our car. The reason for this whole misunderstanding – the First Buyer was deaf and communication had been limited to only a few brief emails. By writing in the dust of a dirty parked car, the First Buyer conveyed that he still wanted the bed, had paid in full, gone to the expense of renting a U-Haul and was very, very displeased (I think he also made that part clear with a few universally-understood hand gestures). But the Bed Owner would not relent and insisted the deal was off.

RWT asked his sister what she wanted to do and she said she really wanted that bed. Although RWT did not agree with her, he felt that she was an adult now and needed to make her own decisions. So they sheepishly packed the mattress and frame into the car and left the Bed Owner and the First Buyer arguing next to the U-Haul.

They arrived back here with the bed and decided the best way to get it into my sister-in-law’s room in the finished basement was through the side door that opens directly into the basement. Unfortunately, the box-spring could not make the turn at the bottom of the stairs to fit though the door. Nor was the stairwell wide enough for the box-spring to be lowered down to the doorway from above. So they took the box-spring around through the front door to the inside staircase to the basement. And… after much scraping of paint from various walls and the ceiling... it would not fit through there either. There was no way, short of cutting it into pieces, that queen-size box-spring was ever going to get into our basement.

RWT’s sister immediately contacted the Bed Owner for the name and address of the First Buyer to check to see if he was still interested in the bed (which RWT would have been more than glad to deliver and even haul up twenty or more flights of stairs), but the Bed Owner would not give out the information. So it was back to craigslist to sell the queen-size bed (which was temporarily residing in our dining room) and look for a full-size bed. (My sis-in-law briefly considered attempting to sell the queen-size bed for more than she paid, but I assured her that she would most certainly go to hell if she did.)

Within a day, RWT’s sister had procured a full-size bed (which did fit through the inside staircase) and found a buyer for the queen-size bed. But when the sweet young man (also a California native) came to pick up the queen-size bed, I felt really sorry for him. I considered warning him, but decided it was not my place (and he'd probably think I was stark raving mad). However, I fear he is doomed to sleep alone as long as he owns that bed. It is the bad karma bed.