Basement Terror: The Night the Bed Wet

NOTE: For a while my freshman year at Pacific Union College (1970-1971) I was on the staff of the college newspaper, the Campus Chronicle, as the news editor. It was an amazing time! I was at the very bottom of the totem pole but I was at least there.

The story below was published in the November 14, 1971 issue and of all the articles we published, this is the only one I remember clearly. Waterbeds were a thing then, a big thing! The article with its edgy humor was not the standard paper article in that era. A couple of what appear to be double entendres would have snapped my 18 year-old head back. And, for anyone who had to deal with the huge intransigent monster water balloon that a waterbed was...you'll resonate with this story. For those of who haven't, well, you just missed out!

Recently I found an archive of all the college papers and found the article! With the help of the layout editor of the paper, Bonnie Lemons (who has gone on from the college paper to have a great career in journalism), I was able to track down the author, Sheryal Denski, and get her permission to post it here. Enjoy!

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The advertisements say, "Waterbeds make two things better. One is sleep." No matter what else they may go on to imply, the other is washing up a Saturday night. 

To get indirectly to the point, I shall get to the beginning of what happened, exactly, last Saturday night. (The names have been changed to protect the guilty.) 

In a magnanimous mood, I offered to help Jane excavate her room so we could spend a riotous evening getting a sandwich from the cafeteria, and then she would write her term paper while I concocted 12 more pages for magazine writing class. Not that Jane actually needed help, but the room certainly did.

Since most of the misplaced items in a messy room have a way of gathering on the bed, the first place to begin, obviously, was with the bed. I would remake it. But it was (is) a Waterbed. The first one I'd ever attempted to put in order. I looked at the SCUM (Self-Contained Undulating Mattress, Jane had christened it) doubtfully—it was seven feet long and five feet wide. Slightly impossible to reach across. But, I could walk around it without floundering on the wooden frame surrounding it. So I did, knocking a picture off the wall en route. Reaching down to rescue the picture wedged between an undulation and the frame, I found something else. Dampness. No, real water…

"Water!" 

"And what else do you expect from A Waterbed?" was the muffled retort from somewhere in the closet, before realizing the import of the awful announcement.

We both checked. An undetermined hole of undetermined size was there. Somewhere, and leaking enough to fill the plastic liner inside the frame and then...It was too horrible to think about. 

" It doesn't leak, Sheryal!"

 "Oh, but it doesn't leak, Deam." One always has to reassure deans about new things. "It has a 20-year guarantee!" 

"It has a 20-year guarantee!. . ." 

Calmly efficient, our first frantic measure was to lock the door. No one should find out. Not after all our speeches to the ignorant gawkers on the merits, habits and infallibility of The Waterbed. But it looked as though our SCUM had to be bailed out, fast. Jane went to inconspicuously scrounge up a hose while I watched SCUM. Just in case. 

Her stealthy tread was soon punctuated by the clinkscrape clank of a hose nozzle on the echoing floor. Well, at least she had it, even if the wing had heard her. 

Our plan was to put the hose against the screen, tightly, and let it drain anonymously into the bushes. The effect was not unlike some blue-bellied baby connected by a green umbilical cord to Mother Earth outside. My maternal fancies dissolved, however, with the bubbling up of water around the valve opening. I held both ends more tightly.

While Jane stood outside, I bounced vigorously on SCUM to give momentum for the burp that would have to climb to sill level. The only action was from the valve again. A shirt was snatched up to staunch the flow. 

Since the valve seemed to be the most generous source of water, perhaps a bowl pressed against it would work. It didn't. We collected about a half cup of water while letting two cups trickle down into the liner. 

There had to be another way. Twelve pages of writing to write, and type, and here I was wet nursing a half-ton bag of water.

"We need a boat pump." 
"We don't have a boat pump."
"We need a vacuum cleaner!" 
"We don't need a vacuum cleaner." 

Instead, we relaid our water line into the shower—a lower level for the water to climb. But no water came. She looked at me. I looked at her. 

"Not me," I said. It was HER Waterbed. I went back to the valve, grabbing a couple of the neighbor's towels on the way. 

I guess she sucked. I was too busy keeping towels wrapped around the valve and wringing out the ones I'd just removed to watch what was going on in the shower. But I heard the choking cough and "It's coming!" 

It wasn't exactly gushing. More like a faucet dripping just enough to let the drops hang together in a skinny drizzle. I brought Jane the cookie jar to keep her comI couldn't very well ask everyone in the hall for "all the towels you can spare, please," because they would naturally want to know "for what?" The laundry room provided the answer and six dry towels. I promised the naked clothesline I'd dry them in the dryer and put them back and then fled. 

Crunching a red M&M (she kept her M&Ms in the cookie jar), Jane informed me that, considering the rate at which the water was going out, as compared to the rate it went in (full faucet for 45 minutes), it was going to be a l-o-n-g night for us. 

"For you," I corrected. Firmly. But, you can't leave a friend sitting alone in the shower all night with only M&Ms for company. Not all night. I continued the diaper changing around the valve, while considering writing an essay on the meaning of true friendship. 

With nothing else to do, Jane kept her mind busy, and mine, with "What if my suite mates come back and want to use the bathroom?" 

"Pretend you're sick." 

She began practicing, with a series of moans, dying wheezes, gasps and other noises in a very healthy-sounding burst of energy. Then, "What are we going to tell the Dean when she checks rooms tonight?" 

Debating the matter, we came up with a) we wanted to see how long it would take to empty The Bed since we don't have anything else to do, or b) we're going to replace the stale water. Neither one sounded especially promising after our repeated, "There's no way it can leak, Dean," as it all too ominously was.

We needed to speed up the trickle. If only we could move the water forward and force more pressure through the hose. What could we raise it with—that had no sharp corners or other dangerous attributes?

"How about you, pushing the SCUM with your feet?" I brightly suggested.

"How about it? " 

It was quite a struggle, getting her one foot, then the other, between the frame and heavy plastic Problem. When she did get them there, there they stayed, pinned in place by the weight. Not one to be willingly crushed to death, Jane got angry, and things began to happen, at last. With a frenzied yell, she strained at the mattress. Then, taking advantage of the resulting wave surging in my direction, she slid down into the temporarily released space, pushing the mass forward with her legs. 

Further gen-tle probing showed us our (w)hole problem. We had put the plastic liner inside the frame first, as per the directions, then fastened it to the frame with thumbtacks before inserting and filling the mattress. After a few thousand jumps on the SCUM, most of the tacks had loosened and fallen out into the liner and one directly into the mattress. A thousand jumps later, the tack had come out of the little hole it had made and the water followed. Now, all we had to do was find the patching kit!

While waiting for borrowed towel number three to soak through I rummaged around the room, searching for the patching kit in only semi-accurate responses to the trapped directions from the puddle.

 It wasn't in the crate by the sink, on the refrigerator, or in the medicine cabinet. And somehow Band-Aids didn't look quite equal to the task. I finally located it in the box in the closet in which it had come, of course. I read aloud:

 "Pool Patch—for mending all plastic surfaces. Caution: do not allow contact with skin. Avoid inhalation of fumes." One little tube, that dangerous? "Apply thinly and evenly to patch cut slightly larger than hole, hold securely in place at least 12 hours. Best results if patch is applied inside pool to allow water pressure to hold in place." 

We decided not to tackle the inside approach. I plunged a tack into the tube to open it. Out spurted the dangerous stuff, all over my fingers, contrary to the specifications and warning. I spread it on the two inch-square patch, which was a little more than the specifications, and hoped that whatever fatal illness to which I was supposed to succumb would wait until we had the SCUM fixed. Or else hurry up so I could forget about the affair. 

Jane drew in her legs to shift to the problem area. The Bed promptly enveloped her in its pseudopodial embrace and she had to violently kick out again. Elbowing the mass aside, she removed her "dike finger," slapped on the glued patch, replaced the towel to keep it dry —all before the wave surged back. That was just what we wanted to happen, finally: let the water pressure hold the patch in place.

All that remained was the mopping-up operation. Jane extricated herself and we faced the last minor technicality of removing the hose from the valve. I prepped the area with two wrung-out towels, she braced and I pulled — and PULLED. All that came out was another protesting slosh of water. 

So close to the finish, we weren't about to be deterred, so we abandoned all pretenses of gentleness. She bounced and I twisted and pulled and twisted and jerked and got madder and Jane yelled something about water running into her lap. At last, one of those things made it pop out and we simultaneously squashed the valve flap shut in a combined head smashing dive.

It had been only three hours since it had all started. Flicking a soggy towel over the undulating plastic expanse, Jane rechristened SCUM a derogatory "Piddle, you puddler, you." It shuddered repentantly, but we ignored it as we gathered the sodden towels, coiled the hose, and disposed of both in one guilty pile in the laundry room. 

Now the moral. The advertisements and stores don't and won't tell you these vital facts and procedures we learned by sink and/or swim. (Pardon the pun; it was a l-o-n-g night.) No, indeed. So you Waterbed Owners, and to-be Waterbed Owners, don't ask. It will do you no good. They will simply deny the possibility of disaster. Deny, that is, until you grab them by the shoulder, sit them down on one of their products, pull out a box of tacks and illustrate your point. And then, only then, will you stand a chance of preventing such an evening of Titanic pastimes for yourself. 

To get you out of the store, they might give you an extra patching kit when you tell them the true story about the night The Bed Wet. Maybe.