Who remembers waterbeds from the 1970’s and 1980’s? They had such an iconic “cool” factor that anyone who had one was considered pretty hip. My dad would frequently visit a friend of his in Huntington Beach, and the friend’s very cute older son, who was about 5 years my senior, would often invite my siblings and me to sit on his waterbed. Since I had a major crush on the boy, I would make sure I had applied my favorite lip gloss before entering his room and battling the undulating movement of the waterbed as I crawled onto it. The boy never noticed my efforts to pretty myself up, but I never gave up hope.
I never enjoyed how much movement occurred throughout the bed whenever anyone would move on it, because it was akin to sitting in a boat on a choppy ocean. It puzzled me how popular waterbeds were, because they didn’t seem stable or comfortable at all. I also didn’t like the large frame which encased the mattress, because it was always made of a hard wood with no padding whatsoever.
In 1981, when I was 14 years old, I met Tom, who became my first boyfriend. He was 15 years old and hung out with the stoner crowd at a large public high school. We met at a friend’s party and latched onto each other almost immediately, becoming an inseparable pair for almost a year. When I first visited him at his house, I noticed that he had a waterbed, and I soon found out that it was his pride and joy. He had a bedspread on it which screamed late 1970’s, with its wide brown, white, and blue stripes in a curved pattern.
We would have make out sessions on that waterbed, despite my complaints about getting motion sickness from time to time. I even lost my virginity on that waterbed to Tom, after 8 months of constant begging on his part for me to give in. Another incident which occurred on that bed was that I became violently ill one evening when I was at Tom’s place, and I threw up in a number of rooms in the house. Tom put me in the bed, placed a towel underneath my face in case I puked again, and called my mom to tell her that I was very ill and needed to stay at his place. I remember hugging the bed frame so tightly, in an effort to keep the waterbed from moving.
All in all, I am glad that waterbeds fell sharply in popularity after the early 80’s!
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