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Partly cloudy skies. High 79F. Winds light and variable..

Partly cloudy skies during the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 56F. Winds light and variable.

I wanted to take a nap on a sunny summer Saturday.

I had earned it: Take dog for one-mile walk; do my laundry and wash the household towels; change the house water filter in the basement; put bleach in the rain barrel to keep the water potable; defrost the small refrigerator.

There in our living room is what to me is the perfect vehicle for such a nap: Our leather couch.

The couch is seven feet long. Its bed-a-bye cocoon is six feet long. That is more than enough space to accommodate my age-shrunken five feet, seven inches of body.

Filling that six feet of nap space were pillows: Six pillows. Two are white. One is red. One is brown. Two are green, sort of.

I moved four of the pillows onto the nearby wing chair, thereby rendering the chair useless as a seat for people. Grumbling, I flopped into the cleared-out space. Sighing, I closed my eyes and wiggled a bit. Snoring (probably), I took my nap.

After I woke up, I sought information from my wife.

“Why do we have six pillows taking up all the seating/sleeping space on that wonderful nap-platform of a couch?” I asked.

Those pillows, she said, make the couch look “interesting.”

Silly me. I had thought its $1,000 price tag a few years ago made it enough.

Grumbling again, I started back toward the living room, out of habit intending to take those “interesting” pillows off the chair and put them back onto the couch.

What was I DOING? I find the couch much more “interesting” with its brown leather seat-sleep space bookended with just two pillows.

So I stopped. I left the couch freed from its useless burdens of “interesting” pillows, available for future nappers.

When I seek a nap, I do not move toward the wing chairs; I beeline for that brown leather couch.

“Bottled water all over again!” I muttered, recapitulating one of my many “This is why you never made a fortune” decisions. Back in the late 1960s, Perrier, Aquafina and Poland Springs, among others, began to sell water that, for a century and more, had been given away freely from water fountains in stores, offices, schools, etc.

I snorted. “Who will ever pay good money for the water that is now free?”

I thought the American people would not be dumb enough to spend millions of dollars each year buying plastic bottles filled with “spring” water, “purified” water, “distilled” water, “flavored” water. Boy, was I wrong.

When I refill my vehicles’ gasoline tanks, I usually refill the reusable insulated drinking cup I keep in each vehicle to provide water — for free.

It appears, however, that out of the 332,403,650 Americans living alongside me, I am one of the few resisters to bottled water.

Oh, I buy the stuff — when we are traveling and convenience cuts into the traveling time.

But when I buy pillows, they are for sleeping, not for looking “interesting.” For that, there are walls that can be brightened by photographs, artwork, mirrors, etc.

The last two pillows that I bought are plain bed pillows. I bought them perhaps 10 years ago. I still use them today.

But my bed does have more pillows. I have a small pillow to ease my arthritic neck and shoulders, and an even smaller pillow to smoosh between my legs, easing the arthritic twinges in my lower back and hips. Both are plain white.

These are not “interesting” pillows. They are “useful” pillows.

Hotels these days have also succumbed to the faux decorating hoax that tries to persuade us that our $200 and up nightly fees are justifiable because the hotels’ beds are “interesting.”

Even some family members confront me with zillions of pillows as I approach their guest room beds.

Much of the time, there is not enough chair space in those bedrooms to accommodate the “interesting” pillows that are totally useless as sleep aids. So I smoosh them into the middle of the bed, then balance myself on my side along an edge of the mattress, hoping that I do not fall out of bed in the middle of the night.

The people who claim that non-sleepable pillows make beds or couches “interesting” must not like to take naps. When I think “Nap!” all other thoughts leave my mind. But instead of blissfully flopping onto the couch seat or mattress, I must move pillows.

What’s next? Bottles of “interesting” water stuck in and among the “interesting” pillows that make couches and beds useless for flopping onto them?

I know, I know; had I invested in bottled water in the 1960s when the craze began, I would now be rich.

Instead, I am just sleepy.

Denny Bonavita is a former editor/publisher at newspapers in DuBois, Brookville, New Bethlehem and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: notniceman9@gmail.com

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