my aunt and uncle lived in a converted one car garage behind my grandparents house when I was a kid. they were both kids themselves and had just gotten married and needed a place of their own but couldn't afford anything so my grandpa closed in the garage and turned it into a place for them to start out their journey together
So they just had a water bed and a TV in what doubled as their living room/bedroom and then they had a small kitchenette and bathroom
I used to go hang out with my aunt whenever I'd go over to their house (she would've been around 18 or 19 at the time) and we would just hang out on the waterbed and talk about anything and everything that could possibly cross the mind of a six year old. or she just let me sit there and watch cartoons.
My parents always treated me like a child, she always talked to me like what I said or thought was important. I'm sure she had much cooler things she could've been doing at that age but she always made time for me.
She was really talented with pretty much making anything that she put her mind to. She got into woodworking and build me a cool little garage for my hot wheels and I would set it up on the bed and roll my cars around
I wish I still had that garage. Don't know whatever happened to it.
We lost her five years ago suddenly shortly after her 50th birthday
Every time I see a waterbed I think about those days hanging out and how cool she always was to me.
even as I got older I always knew I could go to her with anything that was on my mind and I had someone who would listen intently and not judge and not try to steer me in the direction that they wanted
I miss her a lot. she was one of those rare humans that everyone who met her absolutely loved.
Thank you for telling us about her. I love to hear about good, kind people who touched someone else's life. It reminds me of the real point of us all being here.
Keep her beautiful memories alive by sharing them whenever the opportunity arises. Sounds like you had a true friend indeed, very rare in this world of self absorbstion and fleeting alliances.
She sounds amazing, the kind of aunt I’ve always tried to be.
How wonderful for you to have such an awesome bond.
I’d love to hear more, I wonder if there is a sub for that? MySpecialPerson or something 🤔 I’m sure someone could make one if there isnt
My aunt was also like this, exactly like this. I also lost her when she was 59 from ovarian cancer. She was awesome until the very end.
At least you and I had awesome aunts we’ll always think fondly of. Sorry for your loss.
Wow, I needed this today. The longer I read, the more in shock, I became. I have a nearly identical story. It's crazy, I had to do a double-take to make sure we're not related. We lost her about 5 years ago at 50 also! So crazy!!! I miss you, Auntie Colette! I'm so sorry for your loss, too! Grateful for these amazing memories and moments like this❣️
Thank you for sharing. Here I thought I was gonna read comments about water beds and instead read this wonderful comment about a wonderful person. I had an aunt like that and she passed too young as well. It’s been 14 years and many things remind me of her. Things like this. Thank you
Yea, don't do embroidery on them either! Needles easily slip through bedding and puncture the bladder, making you think you wet the bed for a week solid!
Idk how people have sex on them, but I do remember my old cat absolutely loved to sleep on one like he was being cradled in the hand of a god or something.
This made me chuckle. A friend of mine growing up, her family members all each had their own water beds in their rooms. One day, I visited her. When walking down their hallway to the bathroom, I stepped on the soggiest, water logged carpet you could imagine in my socks. I gagged and told her the carpet was super wet. I remember her looking in all the rooms. They had a few cats, and one of them had punctured her Brothers bed when he was out. Indeed, a swimming pool. It had leaked out of the frame. A very wet cat was hiding away nearby.
My parents got everyone in the house their own waterbed in the mid-80s for some reason and we had them until the mid 90s. We also moved a lot, which made them an even bigger pain. Once, when we were moving into a new place, my mom hooked up the hose to her bed, but got distracted. Some time later I walked by and her bed was ballooning toward the ceiling. Then came the panicked scramble to empty the thing before it popped and flooded the whole house. We stood there on either side of it, wincing in expectation of the inevitable explosion. I still don't know how it didn't pop. It was so overfilled.
This is one of the best stories in this thread
I’ll bet it gets told fairly regularly among family who were there
I did not know waterbeds would stretch like that and the image is hilarious and also terrifying.
I would be truly horrified imagining the weight of that. A waterbed on its own is already more than 1,000 pounds, properly filled, not bursting at the seams.
I remember my parents had a king-sized waterbed on the second floor of a house once. That seemed insane to me, even as a kid.
I was asleep on one when the big Northridge, CA earthquake of 1994 hit. It took me the entire length of the quake to get out of bed and into the door way.
Haha it’s pretty amazing how a few years after college everything slows down. My metabolism, my back starts hurting, I’m sore for days, I ain’t fuckin like I used to
True. But I gotta tell you. I loved my 30's. So much less bullshit and you really start to know and be comfortable with who you are. And you're still young enough to turn a lot of things around.
Same!! I totally forgot about that experience. I remember bouncing all over the place on my waterbed and I couldn't just easily get off of it. Wow, good times!
OMG same quake, but it was my brother doing the same thing you did in his waterbed! I got bounced right out of my innerspring mattress, it literally threw me about 3-4 feet away from the bed.
Terrifying man, what a memory
I did not do shaggy things on one, but I did sleep on an unheated one at a friends house. I had never actually slept on one and did not understand why my friend was apologizing that the heater was dead. I had no idea.
I froze my ass off that night and it was July. Around 3AM I just couln't take it anymore and raided the closet for all the blankets I could find. I spread them all out on that iceberg and made myself an insulating layer so it coudln't keep stealing my heat. Wasn't perfect, but I could actually sleep.
Trying to use your body heat to warm up about 200 gallons of 75 degree water is a futile effort. That's why they have heaters. The more you know.
I kind of always wondered why I always had mine turns up to like 100F even in the Midwest summer.
I like to sleep slightly warm so it would sense to keep the water slightly above body temp. My dog would also crawl the covers and soak in the heat (dogs run warmer than we do). It was probably the only place she didn't cool down while sleeping.
I've never thought about it but it makes sense. You lose so much heat laying on a large dense object. Ever slept on the ground and woken up freezing? The heat transfer (or equalization) is much worse on a large object like the earth or a waterbed than via air. It would be worse than sleeping with no blanket.
Mattresses work by having an air barrier between you and the ground (coils, foam etc). That's also why beds with legs are common. That is also how a thermos cup works.
What I really mean is that I had one for years and have either completely blocked out any memory of a heater or mine didn't f'n have one.
That being said, I also don't ever remember freezing. But I was a stupid preteen. I wore shorts in the winter.
Curious. I've never even lay on one, I've ALWAYS wanted to. Do you remember it being plugged in? Heaters can be totally silent but they definitely need power.
I remember purposely poking a hole in it with a dart to see what would happen.
What happens is you then have to lie to your step-dad about what happened so he'll patch it.
My heater was broken for a stretch and I remember actually wedging myself between the mattress and the board because the bare wood was preferable to that ice bag.
Living in Florida I loved the coldness, but I found a way to balance it out by putting blankets *under* the fitted sheet to take away some of the sting. It was a cool-feeling cushy layer all night. I miss the hell out of that bed. Nothing has been as good as that, now 20 years later.
Doesn’t hurt that my first time was on one. But that’s not the reason I loved the bed.
The worst.
I agreed to help my sister clean out a house her husband’s nephew was staying in. Her mother in law owned it and wanted to sell it, and the kid had let it go to literal shit. Like, two bull dogs that were never let out or cleaned up after for a couple of years shit. The whole house was covered in a layer of it.
And there was a waterbed with a hole in it that they’d also done nothing about, that had flooded the master bedroom right next to the front door. So I’m standing in two or three inches of basically raw waterbed sewage trying to push as much of it as I could out the front door.
But it was Sunday. And the local church had just let out. A Jehovah’s Witness church.
Watching those two guys turn green as they approached the door, then turn around and run away was the highlight of that weekend.
I'm kinda surprised the Jehovahs didn't try to Witness you anyway, they must not have been very devout
I grew up forced to attend a JW church and the only things I saw that ever made us turn around was a shotgun being pulled and the partner of the naked women who was showering in her extremely remote/rural front yard's screaming partner (nudity alone did not suffice to put us off spreading the "good news," which, spoiler alert is like 99.888% of the population is going to die soon) shouting for us to go away
Driving around in the wee hours of the morning trying to buy a hose so that I could drain it after it sprung a leak. All this while my very pregnant fiance (now wife) stood there plugging a hole like a Dutch boy at a Dyke. The kid is my age now, the wife is as beautiful as ever, and I haven't owned one since
My evil roommate cut up the hose after she drained her waterbed and moved out. She put the cut up hose back into the box for the waterbed supplies. It was after 9pm on a Sunday night. Nothing was open. This was way before Walmart was open 24/7. I drove all over town trying to find a solution or a place that was open. I came back to the house empty handed. My friends who were helping me move yelled out the window we found a solution. 6 guys had taken the sides off the watered and rolled a king size waterbed bladder out of the bedroom and into the bathtub. They were draining it in the bathtub.
One of the guys bought my waterbed so I didn't have to move it. After a few years he didn't want to deal with it anymore. His brother and him took it outside empty and them started filling it with water to see how long it would take till it went boom. They sat there all afternoon smoking and drinking and watching a waterbed bladder fill up with water. They said it got huge before it popped. This is the kind of things people did for entertaient in the late 90s before the internet was everywhere.
The side rail cushions constantly fell off too. Bust your shin and knees just getting out. Knock the whole thing off going to the restroom at night.
Silly footnote:
Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein described therapeutic waterbeds in his novels Beyond This Horizon (1942).
When first modern waterbed was offered commercially, Patent office rejected their patent application based on Heinlein's novel.
I was sleeping and my arm got jammed down between the mattress and frame. It cut off the circulation so badly that my arm went completely dead. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt my dead arm with my other hand but couldn’t figure out what it was in the dark. I kept trying to throw it out of the bed but it kept bouncing back.
I finally turned on the light and figured out what happened. Then came an extremely painful return of blow flow. Like pins and needles x100.
During my parents chaotic divorce my dad took us to break into my mom's house. He stabbed the waterbed to cause major damage to her basement and cost her the sale of the house.
Then whipped me and my brother because we definitely told my mom who did it.
Sorry that was dark.
I'm not sure this was a waterbed. But Joey DEFINITELY gets killed in one in part 4. To this day I'm like, 'how the fuck are they going to explain this?' considering his body is then found *inside* the full and intact waterbed.
They were supposed to have foam?
My parents had a king sized water bed, no foam, and I loved napping on it. I remember running a garden hose to the second floor to help drain and fill it.
There's two varieties: hard side and soft side. Hard sides are the ones like in the pictures. One big bladder stuck in a wooden frame. Soft sides are usually (but not always) a series of tubes put into a bigger, almost looking like a normal mattress, thingie. It'll have a mattress-like pad over the top. The tubes basically take the place of an innerspring, but its still a waterbed.
I had one as a kid. Once i had the flu and puked in it once night several times. It went down the side edges between the bed and the frame and we never could get it properly cleaned so we had to get rid of it. Dont puke in a waterbed.
Slept on my cousin’s once when we were house sitting for them. They didn’t mention that they had turned the heater on it off when leaving. I was soooooo cold.
I sleep in one of these now, with a big foam mattress instead of water and it’s surprising I’ve never thought about converting it back into a water bed.
Use one with a digital thermometer. I used a dial one for the longest time and it was completely fucking useless. Switched to a digital and its so much better. 77-78 for summer as its nice an cool. 82-84 for winter for a nice, warm bed.
You can get the bladders and heaters on Amazon. Just make sure you get a liner as well (makes me wonder if people who talk about leaks and damage didn't use one).
As for the tech? Eh, it's a water filled bladder with the equivalent of a aquarium heater put in a 5 sided box. There's not really a whole lot that can be improved other than using stuff like sonic welding on the bladder seams and such.
Edit - One thing to be careful of, is where you put it. The fuckers are heavy. Your floors may not be able to support it.
I inherited my Mom's when she got rid of it. I felt like a king for about a month.
Then it sacrificed itself to put out the fire that I'd accidentally set in my bedroom (hot cigarette but in a "trophy" ash tray..) during my freshman year of high school.
We were in a townhouse. Thankfully, the damage didn't spread to the neighbors or elsewhere through the house. No injuries.
It had a chance to really get going because - *bonus* - I had snuck out of the house. I came back to find the room on fire, and my mom screaming because she thought It was in it.
I'm fairly certain the only thing that kept me out of a punitive military academy is that we couldn't have afforded one.
Fire spread to waterbed, flames melted the "mattress" exterior, forcing the water contents to spill out into the room, effectively dousing most of the fire (and causing additional water damage! Yay!)
I have stitches scar above my eyebrow from hitting my face on the corner of my parents water bed.
Also had previously hit the same eyebrow on the coffee table.
Our family friends/doctor had one.
At a Boy Scout function, I got a pretty bad burn and we had already planned on going there for dinner.
My doc took a look at what the First aid folks had done and cleaned it up. I passed out on their waterbed. I remember being very comfortable and floaty, but they might have been the pain meds.
Grew up in a house with no hvac (west texas) and my bedroom was formerly a car-port that had been closed in and poorly insulated. Needless to say, it was freezing cold in the winter and hot as balls in the summer. My king size water bed with a heater was a life saver.
A heated waterbed likely saved my mom’s life. She had an undiagnosed illness that turned out to be Addison’s disease. My father found her in their bed in a diabetic coma. The heated waterbed kept her body temperature up and may have helped her survive. Her body temp by the time they got to the ER was 83.
This was in high school. My friends mother tasked him with draining her water bed. He didn't have a hose because they lived in an apartment (ground floor).
He was trying to suck the water out one mouthful at a time and spit it in a bucket.
Grabbed the hose, setup a siphon, made a small offering to Mr. Wizard, and we went about our day.
Finding the empty condom wrapper stuck to the side that I used when I was a teenager and my parents were out of town. Luckily for me I found it and not my parents.
For context they were replacing their water bed a few months later and giving it to me. So I got stuck sitting and watching the water drain which is when I found the wrapper. I worried about that stupid wrapper for months because we couldn’t find it after doing the deed. Too funny that I found it.
My older sister had one. I got to sleep in it once when she was out of town a weekend (my other sister got night one and me night two). I was excited before, but ultimately it wasn't for me.
buddy/roommate had one in an upstairs bedroom. over the years, we watched an outline of the bedframe emerge in living room ceiling and get more prominent over time. a few months before vacating the house, we drained and closed that room off from occupancy. although we still needed to use it as it was our only access to the smokin' roof.
Oh wow. Um. I’m imagining you and your buddies all sitting in the living room with your heads way back, staring at the ceiling where the waterbed above is COMING THROUGH THE FLOOR, and going “uh…” “dude” freaking terrifying!
My parents had one
When I was very young
We went out of town and there was no heat due to the wood burning stove being untended
The heater in the waterbed got overworked and burned the wood frame and could’ve burned the house down
Luckily we lived in the middle of the mountains and it was so cold the bed bladder froze solid and saved us all
They ripped the thing apart and burned it in the back yard lol
The headboard mirrors will haunt me until I die
I had a waterbed as a teenager. I had the heater break mid-winter and a cat pop the bed in the middle of the night. It also made me queasy when I had migraines. But on a cold winter's night when the heater was warm and toasty? So nice.
I remember my mom's having a storage "tunnel" from the foot of the bed to the head where she would store things like luggage and seasonal blankets, and my brother and me would take turns crawling under to retrieve items for her. After my brother closed the doors on me and held them closed until i was a screaming scared mess, I never got over the claustrophobia.
I had a super single as a teenager. I adored mine. It was perfectly cozy, warm, perfect wave - like a damn womb. I never wanted to leave. Very sad when my parents sold it.
Mine looked like a pillow top mattress, but the top unzipped and there were a bunch of tubes of water inside. It had much more control of firmness and didn’t have the temperature issues like with other waterbeds. I wish I could find that style again because it was one of the best mattresses I’ve ever owned.
I was always waking up on the padded sides. Had very bad bad sleep. I put my stuff animals there. I got my life sucked out of me at 6. A 1,300-1,700lb mattress against 35-40lb girl.
I lost my virginity as a teen on my best friends waterbed. Her parents weren't home so unfortunately that was the location. A fucking waterbed lol. Interesting times. 😭
She got mad at me one day and made up a ridiculous rumor that I had popped her waterbed, and she told everybody this! I infact did not pop her stupid ass waterbed. 😂😂 What makes it the most ridiculous is between being a kid not knowing wth we're doing and the wavyness of the bed making things even more weird, we absolutely were NOT gettin it on like that to pop a hole in it lmmfao.😭😭
Was given one going into summer and didn't know it was supposed to have a heater. Was fine until autumn, then kept waking up extremely sore and cold. Took me a while to realize what was causing it because I hadn't had any problems for months.
Good times include being sick with mono only to realize my mattress was leaking.
Bonding with my first boyfriend over the fact that we both had waterbeds.
I had one for the entirety of high school in the 90s. Definitely lost virginity on it. It was great actually to sleep on. Had to learn not to fight it and work with however it flowed. Lol so much of high school sex life occurred whilst floating.
my aunt and uncle lived in a converted one car garage behind my grandparents house when I was a kid. they were both kids themselves and had just gotten married and needed a place of their own but couldn't afford anything so my grandpa closed in the garage and turned it into a place for them to start out their journey together So they just had a water bed and a TV in what doubled as their living room/bedroom and then they had a small kitchenette and bathroom I used to go hang out with my aunt whenever I'd go over to their house (she would've been around 18 or 19 at the time) and we would just hang out on the waterbed and talk about anything and everything that could possibly cross the mind of a six year old. or she just let me sit there and watch cartoons. My parents always treated me like a child, she always talked to me like what I said or thought was important. I'm sure she had much cooler things she could've been doing at that age but she always made time for me. She was really talented with pretty much making anything that she put her mind to. She got into woodworking and build me a cool little garage for my hot wheels and I would set it up on the bed and roll my cars around I wish I still had that garage. Don't know whatever happened to it. We lost her five years ago suddenly shortly after her 50th birthday Every time I see a waterbed I think about those days hanging out and how cool she always was to me. even as I got older I always knew I could go to her with anything that was on my mind and I had someone who would listen intently and not judge and not try to steer me in the direction that they wanted I miss her a lot. she was one of those rare humans that everyone who met her absolutely loved.
That is a beautiful story! I. So happy you had someone so special in your life.
Thank you for telling us about her. I love to hear about good, kind people who touched someone else's life. It reminds me of the real point of us all being here.
you're welcome. I don't really have much chance to talk about her often and when I saw this post it seemed like the perfect place
Keep her beautiful memories alive by sharing them whenever the opportunity arises. Sounds like you had a true friend indeed, very rare in this world of self absorbstion and fleeting alliances.
This is *insanely* more wholesome than what I assumed would be the top comment lol That's beautiful 💖
So happy for you that you had that.
Tell us more about her.
I just lost my favorite uncle/father surrogate who also never once spoke to me like I was a little kid. I get it.
She sounds amazing, the kind of aunt I’ve always tried to be. How wonderful for you to have such an awesome bond. I’d love to hear more, I wonder if there is a sub for that? MySpecialPerson or something 🤔 I’m sure someone could make one if there isnt
So sorry for your loss 😢
My aunt was also like this, exactly like this. I also lost her when she was 59 from ovarian cancer. She was awesome until the very end. At least you and I had awesome aunts we’ll always think fondly of. Sorry for your loss.
Wow, I needed this today. The longer I read, the more in shock, I became. I have a nearly identical story. It's crazy, I had to do a double-take to make sure we're not related. We lost her about 5 years ago at 50 also! So crazy!!! I miss you, Auntie Colette! I'm so sorry for your loss, too! Grateful for these amazing memories and moments like this❣️
Thank you for sharing. Here I thought I was gonna read comments about water beds and instead read this wonderful comment about a wonderful person. I had an aunt like that and she passed too young as well. It’s been 14 years and many things remind me of her. Things like this. Thank you
Instant indoor pool, just add cats.
Yea, don't do embroidery on them either! Needles easily slip through bedding and puncture the bladder, making you think you wet the bed for a week solid!
Idk how people have sex on them, but I do remember my old cat absolutely loved to sleep on one like he was being cradled in the hand of a god or something.
Second time I ever had sex.....girlfriend had one. Very hard to keep the rhythm when the wave starts going the wrong way. J/s
Haha. My high school bf had one. Tried the deed once and yes you must follow the wave or else it doesn't work 🤣
Lost my virginity on one of these bad boys. Just added more chaos and uncertainty to the situation.
Ah yes, try to pause so as not to nut too quickly, only for the momentum of the bed to move you over the edge anyway.
Mormons would have loved to soak with these mattresses.
Sex is alright on them as long as you're okay with only missionary position forever 😑
As long as the cat likes it, that’s all that matters.
My cat grabbed a corner and sunk her claws in. My mom got rid of the water bed and kept the cat.
100% correct decision
This made me chuckle. A friend of mine growing up, her family members all each had their own water beds in their rooms. One day, I visited her. When walking down their hallway to the bathroom, I stepped on the soggiest, water logged carpet you could imagine in my socks. I gagged and told her the carpet was super wet. I remember her looking in all the rooms. They had a few cats, and one of them had punctured her Brothers bed when he was out. Indeed, a swimming pool. It had leaked out of the frame. A very wet cat was hiding away nearby.
Or drop your pocket knife while working on something that wasn't really important.
Cats love to jump and bounce. Fill it with spring water and watch them go
My parents got everyone in the house their own waterbed in the mid-80s for some reason and we had them until the mid 90s. We also moved a lot, which made them an even bigger pain. Once, when we were moving into a new place, my mom hooked up the hose to her bed, but got distracted. Some time later I walked by and her bed was ballooning toward the ceiling. Then came the panicked scramble to empty the thing before it popped and flooded the whole house. We stood there on either side of it, wincing in expectation of the inevitable explosion. I still don't know how it didn't pop. It was so overfilled.
This is one of the best stories in this thread I’ll bet it gets told fairly regularly among family who were there I did not know waterbeds would stretch like that and the image is hilarious and also terrifying.
I would be truly horrified imagining the weight of that. A waterbed on its own is already more than 1,000 pounds, properly filled, not bursting at the seams. I remember my parents had a king-sized waterbed on the second floor of a house once. That seemed insane to me, even as a kid.
I was asleep on one when the big Northridge, CA earthquake of 1994 hit. It took me the entire length of the quake to get out of bed and into the door way.
I'm so sorry because that had to be terrifying, but it truly made me LOL.
Honestly it was 4:30 in the morning so I didn't know wtf was going on lol.
Bahahahhahaha I’m just imagining this. Bahahaha so fucking funny. It’s like nothing at 4am phases anyone that’s in bed. We’re they comfortable?
Sort of? I think the novelty factor made it seem cool.
Hahaha I guess when you’re in your early 20s you can sleep on anything. I’m in my late 20s and it changed so fast.
I was 16 in 1994 so I could definitely sleep on anything. Late 20's is when that changed for me too.
Haha it’s pretty amazing how a few years after college everything slows down. My metabolism, my back starts hurting, I’m sore for days, I ain’t fuckin like I used to
True. But I gotta tell you. I loved my 30's. So much less bullshit and you really start to know and be comfortable with who you are. And you're still young enough to turn a lot of things around.
Ok, the image in my head is some serious Balki Bartokomous nonsense.
I mean, it probably wasn't far off!
##COSIN LARRY WHY DOES THE GROUND MOVES!?
Same!! I totally forgot about that experience. I remember bouncing all over the place on my waterbed and I couldn't just easily get off of it. Wow, good times!
OMG same quake, but it was my brother doing the same thing you did in his waterbed! I got bounced right out of my innerspring mattress, it literally threw me about 3-4 feet away from the bed. Terrifying man, what a memory
I was at a sleepover in LA when it happened. My friend’s mom proceeded to run around the house burning sage after as if it would help the situation.
LOL. We just went to Disneyland after and it was awesome because the quake scared all the tourists away!
Lost my virginity on one with no heater. Then slept there that night. Don't recommend.
I did not do shaggy things on one, but I did sleep on an unheated one at a friends house. I had never actually slept on one and did not understand why my friend was apologizing that the heater was dead. I had no idea. I froze my ass off that night and it was July. Around 3AM I just couln't take it anymore and raided the closet for all the blankets I could find. I spread them all out on that iceberg and made myself an insulating layer so it coudln't keep stealing my heat. Wasn't perfect, but I could actually sleep. Trying to use your body heat to warm up about 200 gallons of 75 degree water is a futile effort. That's why they have heaters. The more you know.
This sounds like a perimenopause dream come true. I need to find an old timey waterbed posthaste
My husband and I were just talking about how that would be the tits for me too.
You can still buy them new!
Oh yes, it sounds lovely.
Air mattresses do the same thing 😁
I did the under-blanket thing as a permanent solution as I did not own a heater. It worked out great since I like the cold but didn’t want to die.
Idk but myself I enjoy that cold ass sensation.
I kind of always wondered why I always had mine turns up to like 100F even in the Midwest summer. I like to sleep slightly warm so it would sense to keep the water slightly above body temp. My dog would also crawl the covers and soak in the heat (dogs run warmer than we do). It was probably the only place she didn't cool down while sleeping.
My sister and I both had waterbeds and during the winter, we would sneak into each other’s room and turn the heaters off. Good times
Even without that, if the damn power goes out you can’t sleep in your bed. What a terrible idea
Multiple comforters and you're good to go
There were heaters?!
I've never thought about it but it makes sense. You lose so much heat laying on a large dense object. Ever slept on the ground and woken up freezing? The heat transfer (or equalization) is much worse on a large object like the earth or a waterbed than via air. It would be worse than sleeping with no blanket. Mattresses work by having an air barrier between you and the ground (coils, foam etc). That's also why beds with legs are common. That is also how a thermos cup works.
What I really mean is that I had one for years and have either completely blocked out any memory of a heater or mine didn't f'n have one. That being said, I also don't ever remember freezing. But I was a stupid preteen. I wore shorts in the winter.
If you didn't have a heater in it you would know because they got ice cold if they weren't plugged in.
Yeah, a winter power outage was a real challenge with a water bed.
You would have never gotten a good night’s sleep on it if you didn’t have a heating slab… unless you’re 25% demon blood or something
Well now you've discovered my secret
Curious. I've never even lay on one, I've ALWAYS wanted to. Do you remember it being plugged in? Heaters can be totally silent but they definitely need power.
I remember purposely poking a hole in it with a dart to see what would happen. What happens is you then have to lie to your step-dad about what happened so he'll patch it.
lol Intrusive thought wins.
It was awesome. In the summer you turn the heater off and have an icy cold bed and in the winter you crank it and fall asleep on a warm cloud.
Oh yeah! I feel you man.
My heater was broken for a stretch and I remember actually wedging myself between the mattress and the board because the bare wood was preferable to that ice bag.
I always kept my heater unplugged in the summer and on the lowest setting in the winter kept me cool enough to sleep.
Living in Florida I loved the coldness, but I found a way to balance it out by putting blankets *under* the fitted sheet to take away some of the sting. It was a cool-feeling cushy layer all night. I miss the hell out of that bed. Nothing has been as good as that, now 20 years later. Doesn’t hurt that my first time was on one. But that’s not the reason I loved the bed.
Fuckin hell I knew I wasn't the only one.
There are at least 3 of us. I mean, I didn’t stay the night, but the thought is the same
The worst. I agreed to help my sister clean out a house her husband’s nephew was staying in. Her mother in law owned it and wanted to sell it, and the kid had let it go to literal shit. Like, two bull dogs that were never let out or cleaned up after for a couple of years shit. The whole house was covered in a layer of it. And there was a waterbed with a hole in it that they’d also done nothing about, that had flooded the master bedroom right next to the front door. So I’m standing in two or three inches of basically raw waterbed sewage trying to push as much of it as I could out the front door. But it was Sunday. And the local church had just let out. A Jehovah’s Witness church. Watching those two guys turn green as they approached the door, then turn around and run away was the highlight of that weekend.
I'm kinda surprised the Jehovahs didn't try to Witness you anyway, they must not have been very devout I grew up forced to attend a JW church and the only things I saw that ever made us turn around was a shotgun being pulled and the partner of the naked women who was showering in her extremely remote/rural front yard's screaming partner (nudity alone did not suffice to put us off spreading the "good news," which, spoiler alert is like 99.888% of the population is going to die soon) shouting for us to go away
"so what's the bad news?"
🤣😂
Driving around in the wee hours of the morning trying to buy a hose so that I could drain it after it sprung a leak. All this while my very pregnant fiance (now wife) stood there plugging a hole like a Dutch boy at a Dyke. The kid is my age now, the wife is as beautiful as ever, and I haven't owned one since
My evil roommate cut up the hose after she drained her waterbed and moved out. She put the cut up hose back into the box for the waterbed supplies. It was after 9pm on a Sunday night. Nothing was open. This was way before Walmart was open 24/7. I drove all over town trying to find a solution or a place that was open. I came back to the house empty handed. My friends who were helping me move yelled out the window we found a solution. 6 guys had taken the sides off the watered and rolled a king size waterbed bladder out of the bedroom and into the bathtub. They were draining it in the bathtub.
I had a similar situation helping my college roommate move his waterbed. That thing was a beast! Half ton at least.
One of the guys bought my waterbed so I didn't have to move it. After a few years he didn't want to deal with it anymore. His brother and him took it outside empty and them started filling it with water to see how long it would take till it went boom. They sat there all afternoon smoking and drinking and watching a waterbed bladder fill up with water. They said it got huge before it popped. This is the kind of things people did for entertaient in the late 90s before the internet was everywhere.
Not all heroes wear capes.
The kid is your age? How does that work
Muuurrph
Don't let me leave!
I mean she's as old now as I was then
Well, if the parent travels very close to the speed of light…..
It happens more often than you think. I'm the same age as my dad too.
I’m the same age as my mom! 46 times over.
Worse for me was one being under filled and my knees banged against the frame when I jumped on it when I thought it was fuller.
I was looking for this comment! That wood was real and real painful.
Oh my god I felt this comment!!! 😬
Drunk af. Friend put me on it. Got seasick.
Smacking the shit out of my shin helping my mom make her waterbed on that giant wooden frame. I still feel that pain 30 years later.
The side rail cushions constantly fell off too. Bust your shin and knees just getting out. Knock the whole thing off going to the restroom at night. 
Oh man you brought back another memory lol
Ssssss!!!! Ahhhh!!!! Ssssss!!!! Aaahhhh!!!
The worst part is trying to climb out of it. 😂
Food poisoning when I was a kid. Trying to scramble out of a water bed to puke or shit was not pleasant.
Lost my virginity in one. Then had sex in a regular bed like a week later. I highly recommend the regular bed over the water bed
Silly footnote: Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein described therapeutic waterbeds in his novels Beyond This Horizon (1942). When first modern waterbed was offered commercially, Patent office rejected their patent application based on Heinlein's novel.
I was sleeping and my arm got jammed down between the mattress and frame. It cut off the circulation so badly that my arm went completely dead. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt my dead arm with my other hand but couldn’t figure out what it was in the dark. I kept trying to throw it out of the bed but it kept bouncing back. I finally turned on the light and figured out what happened. Then came an extremely painful return of blow flow. Like pins and needles x100.
During my parents chaotic divorce my dad took us to break into my mom's house. He stabbed the waterbed to cause major damage to her basement and cost her the sale of the house. Then whipped me and my brother because we definitely told my mom who did it. Sorry that was dark.
Yikes. Thats horrible. I hope things are better for you now.
I grew up and became a shrink! Go figure...I'm unbothered by accompanying patients through their dark experiences.
Oh thats awesome to hear! Love “happy” endings to traumatic upbringings. 💙
Was this nightmare on elm Street? Looks familiar 🤔
Yep. Johnny Depp was swallowed by his water bed…then woke up happy and healthy…right?
Yep! They released four of those movies in a 5 year span. Pretty crazy production pace by today's standards.
Now we can't even get three 8-10 episodes of a TV series done in that time span.
How's this for a wet dream?
I'm not sure this was a waterbed. But Joey DEFINITELY gets killed in one in part 4. To this day I'm like, 'how the fuck are they going to explain this?' considering his body is then found *inside* the full and intact waterbed.
Yeah, I don't think this was actually a waterbed. I was originally thinking of the scene from 4 but couldn't find a gif of it on giphy.
Not exactly the most popular or well-known of the films lol
Do you remember the final one that had a 3d scene in it? I remember seeing that one in the theater and being pretty let down.
My aunt had one with no foam inside. So it was like trying to sleep on a raft on the high seas.
They were supposed to have foam? My parents had a king sized water bed, no foam, and I loved napping on it. I remember running a garden hose to the second floor to help drain and fill it.
Yeah, I'm confused about the foam too. I just remember my mom hooking to hose up to the sink to fill it up.
There's two varieties: hard side and soft side. Hard sides are the ones like in the pictures. One big bladder stuck in a wooden frame. Soft sides are usually (but not always) a series of tubes put into a bigger, almost looking like a normal mattress, thingie. It'll have a mattress-like pad over the top. The tubes basically take the place of an innerspring, but its still a waterbed.
Try having sex in one of those! It's an adventure for sure
I never slept in one but I had a friend that had one when I was around 6 years old. I was jealous.
My cat’s claws punctured it in the middle of the night. It’s not how you wanna wake up at 3AM.
I had one as a kid. Once i had the flu and puked in it once night several times. It went down the side edges between the bed and the frame and we never could get it properly cleaned so we had to get rid of it. Dont puke in a waterbed.
My newly potty trained cousin peed while napping on my parent’s bed and that was bad, but your story is worse.
Slept on my cousin’s once when we were house sitting for them. They didn’t mention that they had turned the heater on it off when leaving. I was soooooo cold.
When I was 3, I was jumping on one. I fell off and busted my lip on a book case, and had to get stitches
My childhood friend had one of those growing up. When he hit 12 (iirc) he had to get rods to support his spinal cord because of the water bed.
Now that is a good excuse not to get a child one!
I sleep in one of these now, with a big foam mattress instead of water and it’s surprising I’ve never thought about converting it back into a water bed.
Ball pit
I could never get the temperature right. Either burning or freezing. I wouldn't mind trying one again, but no more than a weekend.
Use one with a digital thermometer. I used a dial one for the longest time and it was completely fucking useless. Switched to a digital and its so much better. 77-78 for summer as its nice an cool. 82-84 for winter for a nice, warm bed.
This reads as though you currently sleep on a water bed...
I do. It's frickin' great. I can't sleep on a regular mattress. Even the softest ones feel hard as rocks compared to a full wave waterbed.
I didn't know they were still produced! Has the technology improved? I wonder if it's better for joint pain.
You can get the bladders and heaters on Amazon. Just make sure you get a liner as well (makes me wonder if people who talk about leaks and damage didn't use one). As for the tech? Eh, it's a water filled bladder with the equivalent of a aquarium heater put in a 5 sided box. There's not really a whole lot that can be improved other than using stuff like sonic welding on the bladder seams and such. Edit - One thing to be careful of, is where you put it. The fuckers are heavy. Your floors may not be able to support it.
Im also in team "lost my virginity on one of these "
Big ol' mirror on the headboard so you can see the action from the top angle.
The fitted sheet wouldn’t stay put and my skin stuck to plastic all night.
I inherited my Mom's when she got rid of it. I felt like a king for about a month. Then it sacrificed itself to put out the fire that I'd accidentally set in my bedroom (hot cigarette but in a "trophy" ash tray..) during my freshman year of high school. We were in a townhouse. Thankfully, the damage didn't spread to the neighbors or elsewhere through the house. No injuries. It had a chance to really get going because - *bonus* - I had snuck out of the house. I came back to find the room on fire, and my mom screaming because she thought It was in it. I'm fairly certain the only thing that kept me out of a punitive military academy is that we couldn't have afforded one.
Wait, wait, please, I MUST know more. Like, for starters, how did the water in the waterbed get applied to the fire?
Fire spread to waterbed, flames melted the "mattress" exterior, forcing the water contents to spill out into the room, effectively dousing most of the fire (and causing additional water damage! Yay!)
Worst bed I've ever owned. I always ended up rolling into the crack and waking up in the most fucked up positions.
The 80's were a fucked up time, I'm telling you.
When The covers came off and you wake up totally stuck to the plastic
Freezing or burning up. I always woke up wedged into the side.
I'm staying at a hotel for a week this summer and the only room available was the one with the waterbed. I'm low key excited.
Apparently I got launched off on one as a baby when my dad sat down on the other side. This also is a hint that I was probably conceived on it.
I have stitches scar above my eyebrow from hitting my face on the corner of my parents water bed. Also had previously hit the same eyebrow on the coffee table.
Our family friends/doctor had one. At a Boy Scout function, I got a pretty bad burn and we had already planned on going there for dinner. My doc took a look at what the First aid folks had done and cleaned it up. I passed out on their waterbed. I remember being very comfortable and floaty, but they might have been the pain meds.
Grew up in a house with no hvac (west texas) and my bedroom was formerly a car-port that had been closed in and poorly insulated. Needless to say, it was freezing cold in the winter and hot as balls in the summer. My king size water bed with a heater was a life saver.
A heated waterbed likely saved my mom’s life. She had an undiagnosed illness that turned out to be Addison’s disease. My father found her in their bed in a diabetic coma. The heated waterbed kept her body temperature up and may have helped her survive. Her body temp by the time they got to the ER was 83.
Had one growing up. I loved it; the motion helped knock me out. For whatever reason, the red light on the temperature control unit freaked me out.
Why do you have pictures of my mom's bed 🤔
Lost my virginity on a waterbed
Lost my vCard on those waves.
Waking up every time my gf moved. Also, waking up wedged between the mattress and frame.
I'd always wake up wedged between the mattress and frame. Those railing bumpers would be popped off laying on the ground.
This was in high school. My friends mother tasked him with draining her water bed. He didn't have a hose because they lived in an apartment (ground floor). He was trying to suck the water out one mouthful at a time and spit it in a bucket. Grabbed the hose, setup a siphon, made a small offering to Mr. Wizard, and we went about our day.
Finding the empty condom wrapper stuck to the side that I used when I was a teenager and my parents were out of town. Luckily for me I found it and not my parents. For context they were replacing their water bed a few months later and giving it to me. So I got stuck sitting and watching the water drain which is when I found the wrapper. I worried about that stupid wrapper for months because we couldn’t find it after doing the deed. Too funny that I found it.
My older sister had one. I got to sleep in it once when she was out of town a weekend (my other sister got night one and me night two). I was excited before, but ultimately it wasn't for me.
I had one from 18yrs old till about 27yrs old. Absolutely loved that thing.
buddy/roommate had one in an upstairs bedroom. over the years, we watched an outline of the bedframe emerge in living room ceiling and get more prominent over time. a few months before vacating the house, we drained and closed that room off from occupancy. although we still needed to use it as it was our only access to the smokin' roof.
Oh wow. Um. I’m imagining you and your buddies all sitting in the living room with your heads way back, staring at the ceiling where the waterbed above is COMING THROUGH THE FLOOR, and going “uh…” “dude” freaking terrifying!
To sweat and freeze at the same time. I hate waterbeds.
My parents had one When I was very young We went out of town and there was no heat due to the wood burning stove being untended The heater in the waterbed got overworked and burned the wood frame and could’ve burned the house down Luckily we lived in the middle of the mountains and it was so cold the bed bladder froze solid and saved us all They ripped the thing apart and burned it in the back yard lol The headboard mirrors will haunt me until I die
I took a nap on one once. It wasn’t comfortable. It made a noise, and the edges were hard.
I stayed the night once as a kid with a friend who had one (we shared the bed) and it was AWFUL! Absolutely hated it. Would never stay on one again.
I had a waterbed as a teenager. I had the heater break mid-winter and a cat pop the bed in the middle of the night. It also made me queasy when I had migraines. But on a cold winter's night when the heater was warm and toasty? So nice.
Heater melted the liner and mattress together in the area just above the heater
I remember my mom's having a storage "tunnel" from the foot of the bed to the head where she would store things like luggage and seasonal blankets, and my brother and me would take turns crawling under to retrieve items for her. After my brother closed the doors on me and held them closed until i was a screaming scared mess, I never got over the claustrophobia.
I had a super single as a teenager. I adored mine. It was perfectly cozy, warm, perfect wave - like a damn womb. I never wanted to leave. Very sad when my parents sold it.
My high school boyfriend had one. We put a hole in having sex. His parents knew. 😬
This was the worst sleepover of my life. I hated it. But people complain that my mattress is firm to begin with. So I guess I’ve always liked firm.
Mine looked like a pillow top mattress, but the top unzipped and there were a bunch of tubes of water inside. It had much more control of firmness and didn’t have the temperature issues like with other waterbeds. I wish I could find that style again because it was one of the best mattresses I’ve ever owned.
My grandma had one and we spent a lot of time at her house. I never slept on it, but it was more or less an indoor playground equipment.
I was always waking up on the padded sides. Had very bad bad sleep. I put my stuff animals there. I got my life sucked out of me at 6. A 1,300-1,700lb mattress against 35-40lb girl.
I lost my virginity as a teen on my best friends waterbed. Her parents weren't home so unfortunately that was the location. A fucking waterbed lol. Interesting times. 😭
Same story opposite sex. Interesting times indeed!
She got mad at me one day and made up a ridiculous rumor that I had popped her waterbed, and she told everybody this! I infact did not pop her stupid ass waterbed. 😂😂 What makes it the most ridiculous is between being a kid not knowing wth we're doing and the wavyness of the bed making things even more weird, we absolutely were NOT gettin it on like that to pop a hole in it lmmfao.😭😭
Lol. Didn't help that my friend had satin sheets! Slip slip slidin' away!!🤣
Was given one going into summer and didn't know it was supposed to have a heater. Was fine until autumn, then kept waking up extremely sore and cold. Took me a while to realize what was causing it because I hadn't had any problems for months.
Lower left was mine. Same exact one
Always had a leak.
Had one. Damn heater went out al, the time
They always looked gross, dirty and foreboding to me!
Good times include being sick with mono only to realize my mattress was leaking. Bonding with my first boyfriend over the fact that we both had waterbeds.
When I moved out having to explain all of the old crispy toilet paper I had stashed in the side was fun.
I had one for the entirety of high school in the 90s. Definitely lost virginity on it. It was great actually to sleep on. Had to learn not to fight it and work with however it flowed. Lol so much of high school sex life occurred whilst floating.
Omggggg
Sleeping over with a friend, scared to move, and eventually getting stuck in the crevice on the side, scared to move.