I wonder what the mattress people would say about a waterbed…
BTW, how firm/medium/soft a mattress feels varies with the weight of the person sleeping on the mattress. ‘Soft’ means the mattress gives way easily to your body, and ‘hard’ means hardly all – but a mattress can have an (objective) resistance to compression that would allow Reuben to almost sink out of sight while Clay hardly made a dent.
So when your coworker boasts about how firm her mattress is, you can look sympathetic and say, “It’s good you got a mattress strong enough to stand up to the job” and let her wonder if there’s an implied insult there or not. 
The ‘stupid aspect to boast about’ that most irks me is 'sensitivity." As in emotionally vulnerable. “My emotional balance and/or self esteem is so shaky that I will take offense/be hurt/become angry at virtually anything said or done that doesn’t perfectly agree with what I wanted said or done.”
Well, it’s not so much that they are sensitive that bothers me, but the associated implication that 1) you are supposed to somehow know what I will feel about any given topic/activity and 2) you should tailor everything you do or say to AVOID hurting/upsetting/angering me and 3) if you don’t, you are IN THE WRONG.
Hey, if you are that freaking emotionally vulnerable, get help! Grow up, get a grip, develop a thicker skin, buy a sense of humor, whatever it takes. You are not the center of the universe and other people do and say what they do for their own inner reason – learn to deal with it.
That it’s all washed up, of course. 
This is like a Mac/PC debate. The waterbed camp. although small, will stand back and proclaim their superiority. The real mattress owners will say "Oh, no. I could never use a waterbed. And they’re too expensive, and I wouldn’t be able to use them with my current sheets. "
Great topic, by the by:
I have two that drive me especially batty, whenever I hear them being expounded.
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Can we all just accept that there is no special virtue attached to rising early.
It’s just not that impressive, okay? Anyone with an alarm can do. I have done it on occassions myself. That I don’t choose to arrange my life in such a way that I am required to do so everyday does not make me a lesser being. -
Secondly, there is no inherent virtue in having reproduced. Birds do it, bees do it, monkeys in trees do it. It does not make you a stellar, wiser or more evolved human being. Your excessive need to crow about it only serves to annoy those around you and to make anyone suffering through reproductive issues think you are a boor.
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.
Sigh:::: I’m feeling much better now::::::!!!
I use only the best keyboards, imported from Constantinople, and my colon key doesn’t stick.
Oh, man, this one gets me, too. I was never a real fan of early rising, but now I work from 4 p.m. to midnight, so getting up early is not only hard, it doesn’t make sense. If I hear one more person say, “Oh, well, you could get up at 8 a.m. if you go right to bed when you get home!” I’m gonna lose it. I wonder how they would react if someone told them they should go to bed as soon as they got home from work at 5:30 p.m…(and not only that they should, but that they are some sort of lazy slacker if they don’t go right to bed so they can rise with the chickadees or some such malarkey…)
One of the nurses at work (dubbed by most of us as "Super-Nurse) cannot have a conversation without bragging.
Today she was showing pictures of her 3 yr old (who we hear endless cutesy stories about). In one shot he was with another little boy.
Random nurse: “Who’s that little boy?”
Super-Nurse: “Oh that’s Matthews best friend. His mother is the D.O.N at the hospital and his father is the president of 1st National Bank.”
Me: :rolleyes:
No one asked what this random childs parents do for a living and why would we care??? 
This is the same woman who has to point out that she paid $400 for her dog everytime the dog (or anyone else’s dog) is mentioned.
Preach it, elbows!
Yeah, yeah, I know softer mattresses squeak!! 
Maybe it’s because the people with extra-firm mattresses are prudes, whereas the soft mattresses provide “more cushion for the pushin’” or something equally juvenile and applied to the wrong situation.
I grew up with a father who always knew more than anyone about everything. And he just had to be right all the time. It got to the point when I was a teenager that I would start arguing the sky is blue during the daytime and black at night just to hear him insist that, “No, it’s not! You know perfectly well the sky is BLACK during the day and BLUE at night, and I can prove it by what I just read in this erudite and obscure book with umteen physics theorems** to back me up!” Then the next day I’d argue the exact opposite of my previous day’s argument just to hear him once again contradict and correct me.
Hey, I had to do something to keep my sanity.
**I have no idea if there is such a thing as physics theorems, it’s just hyperbole.