By N.A. Booko
Pittsboro, NC – Not what you think. You know me. I’m the last to get entangled in hot controversy. Won’t go blabbing about something that will get folks all heated and stirred up! But honestly, this is a story that needs to be told. It would be frigid of me let it go untold.
I suppose it was around 1947-48 that we got our first electric blankets. It was the 13th wonder of the world to a lot of people. Me? I didn’t like them right from the beginning. Something about that light weight covering and those boney wires stretching across my body; left me like Yetch! And one had to be so careful too.”Don’t get the wires twisted”, “your side is too hot, don’t hog the heat”, ‘is this thing on?”
I put up with these torture chambers on and off for the next forty five years. Never ever satisfied with the end result. And the new ones were always too expensive. The thrift store used ones were there for a reason. Maybe faulty or something. I tried several second hand ones. Never happy.
I then decided a heating pad, turned on thirty minutes before bedtime was the answer. It was, if you only wanted a sixteen by sixteen warm spot to warm your whole body.
Then came the day. At a thrift shop, there was, what appeared to be a cream colored electric blanket in a clear plastic zipper bag. It only had the price and the word “Works.” I snapped it up, knowing full well I had four others at home.
I have always had a fear of bed bugs. So I am especially careful with second hand purchases. I left that item in the clear zipper bag, zipped tight, for a little over a year in an outbuilding. Making sure any creepie-crawlies had expired.
Finally, when I took it out, to put on the bed, to my utter shock, it wasn’t a blanket, but a fitted mattress warmer. Just like an electric blanket, but it fits on the mattress and sends up heat from below! What a brilliant idea. Trial and error with settings, proved to me it needed something on top of it for softness and to distribute the heat a little better. I folded two blankets and laid over the pad. Then put on a fitted sheet to hold it all together.
Turning that magic carpet on every night, on high thirty minutes before retiring gets the bed ready for sleeping. It makes cold winter sleeping a pleasure.
I googled ‘heated mattress pad/cover” and did find out that Walmart stocks them. I have not personally seen them there, but it is a good start for locating one. You can wait forever for another one to show up at the thrift store. If it does, I might tangle with you over it.
Warm wishes!