From Waterbeds to Ice Rinks: A Journey of Epic Fails

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Sit back, relax. Unless you're driving. It's time for that's a Free Bee. This is. That's a freebie. And on the show this week, I'm going to be diving deep into waterbeds.

I wish I was diving deep into a waterbed. And I'm going to tell you about the silly accident that I had just a few days ago.

But before any of that, I'm going to start with a Dear Diggy question. And this week's question is from listener Sophie.

And the question is, Dear Diggy, if you had to legally change your name to something ridiculous, what would you pick? I don't know what I would pick. There are so many possibilities.

However, I think the most ridiculous name I can think of is Benadryl Cucumber Patch, which is what I call Benedict Cumberbatch, which I feel sorry for the guy, actually, because he gets his name, like, completely destroyed so often. But, yeah, Benadryl Cucumber Patch. I think that's pretty ridiculous and at the same time, not offensive.

So, yeah, that's probably what I would change my name to. Some would argue that the fact that it's already Diggy is probably ridiculous enough. I would probably also argue the same.

t's Fluxo Media media. In the: 1980

Once a symbol of luxury and questionable life choices, water beds made up 22% of the mattress market. At their peak today, they account for less than 5%, proving that sometimes sleeping in a giant bag of water isn't all it's cracked up to be.

ping patients comfortable. In: 1833

Mark Twain mentioned them in: 1871

Heinlein was describing waterbeds in his novels, complete with temperature control and support for your aching sci f Buy back. He didn't patent the idea, though, which was a huge win for a guy named Charles Hall.

In: 1968

d support for human bodies in: 1971

His company, Inner Space Environment, went on to sell millions of them.

By: 1987

But let's be real, the advertising focus more on the bed's potential for undisturbed sleep, which everyone understood was a euphemism for something else entirely. Unfortunately, the reality was less sexy. Moving a waterbed was a nightmare.

Sheets were hard to find and if the power went out, your toasty bed turned into an ice cold water coffin. Plus, leaks were constant threats. Because nothing says romance like waking up in a puddle. Nope, not going there.

In the: 1990

Most banned waterbeds outright due to their potential for disaster. I did actually check before recording this today. And my rental agreement on the house that we are currently in does in fact ban waterbeds.

Today, waterbeds make up less than 5% of new bed sales. Mostly to people who refuse to let the dream die are people that love the movie Austin Powers.

Despite their fall from grace, waterbeds changed the mattress industry. Modern mattresses with memory foam and temperature control owe a lot to the innovations of the waterbed era.

Love for more hate than waterbeds had that moment in the sun. And for those who still have one, don't worry, your secret safe with me. Now. I've never actually been on a waterbed.

I'd be curious to hear from any listeners that have experience with waterbeds, because I have none. I don't even think I've ever seen one. Don't forget if you want to submit a topic for Pet Tales. Yes, I said Pet Tales. I meant to say Pod Tales.

I'm gonna leave it in. All you need to do is go to Fluxo Media and you can submit a topic there. That's Fluxo Dot Media.

Here it is, the story of the silly accident that I had just a few days ago. It was a perilous Saturday morning. No, it was. It was just A regular Saturday morning. I took the kids ice skating.

You can probably see where this is going already. I've been promising for months and months and months that I would go ice skating with them. They go fairly regularly.

I've never needed to go, never needed to go, Never been in a position where I could go because I was at work. We were supposed to go for my daughter's birthday back in February. However, I was sick, if you recall.

I had bad hives, I had bad swelling, so I couldn't go. So we set aside this, the weekend, just gone to go ice skating. We booked it, we got there, I had a go.

I knew pretty much right away that it wasn't something that I was going to enjoy, I wasn't going to keep going back. But I, I, you know, I went with it. I shuffled myself along on the ice. I did really well.

It was a two and a half hour session and I didn't fall at all until the very end. And I'd already decided that I'd given up for the evening as well. I was like, you know what? I'm getting tired now.

I've been really lucky not to fall at this point. It looks pain when people fall.

Like some people were falling and they were, they were struggling to get back up and others were falling and getting back up. It was fine.

As what I did notice is if you were going fast and you fell, it was, it seemed easier because you sort of slid along the ice rather than just hit the ice. Of course I wasn't going fast because all I could do was basically shuffle and walk along the ice. I was doing fairly well.

But I, I decided one more go around and what a mistake that was. I, I got halfway around. I, I still now don't know what happened.

All I know is my feet went from under me and I fell forwards and I landed on my wrist. And next thing I knew, my wrist was touching the back of my arm. I could feel it. I was lay on it and I was crushing my wrist into the back of my arm.

So I, I managed to roll over. A few people came over and said, you know, let's help you up.

And one of them tried to grab hold of the arm that I just very clearly destroyed and they pulled on it to lift me up and I said, oh no, I've broken that wrist. And they looked me dead in the eye and they went, no, you've not. If you'd broken your wrist, you'd be crying now.

I knew my wrist was broken, but I was like, okay, but can you help me up with the other side, please? So anyway, that happened. They helped me up with the other side. They got me to the other side of the ice. They got me near the. The edge, basically.

I was able to sort of hook myself over the edge of the railing and that was the moment that my eyes rolled into the back of my head and I passed out. I was only gone a few seconds. I remember them actually sliding me off the ice, through the door, popping me in a wheelchair.

And then I started coming back round. I started feeling very sick and really, really nauseous. I got. I had to. I was obviously layered up as well. So I. I started trying to get all my.

My coat off and my jumper off and. Which was obviously difficult because my hand was pointing in the wrong direction. So eventually we got it all off and it was.

It was clear at that point that there was a break in my wrist. My. My whole arm and my hand had all swelled up and my wrist was twisting to one side like a banana.

So made my way to the hospital, gets to the hospital, and they said, yep, that's definitely broken. They kept calling it a banana break. I think it's because my arm looked like it was bent like a banana at this point.

And so I got an X ray and, yeah, essentially what had happened is the. The bone in my wrist has snapped and then pointed upwards, so it sort of turned in the skin inside.

And I cannot describe the pain that I felt when they put that back in place because they. They basically had to pull my arm from either end and stretch it.

And then another doctor had to then basically twist the bone and put it back in place and then release it and. Good God. Did it hurt? I. I was on morphine and I could feel it through the morphine.

I had like, this breathing tube to breathe, to just keep breathing it. Oh, man, I. I nearly passed out from the pain there, but I didn't. I wish I did. I would happily have let myself go, but I couldn't.

I couldn't let myself go. I kept huffing on the morphine, trying to try to knock myself out with it, and it wasn't for happening. So, yeah, I brought my wrist.

I've got a sling on. I've currently got a temporary cast on. I'm going back on Friday to have some more checks done.

There was a worry that there might be some nerve damage because I couldn't feel my fingers. I can now. I can feel my fingers and my thumb. Thumb I can't fully feel, but I can move it. So that's a good start.

I could sort of tell if I'm like, I'm. If I'm scratching it, I can tell it's been scratched.

But I can also tell that the, the, like, the, the sensation is numbed compared to what it would be like. But it's also still very, very, very swollen. So I'll probably have another update for you in the next episode.

But the hope is that they, they take this temporary cast off and everything is sort of still set correctly. They could put the proper cast on then. Yeah. Apparently it could be six to eight weeks for it to fully heal. Yeah.

The hard part, which you could probably guess. Oh, well, other than the pain, the pain was nothing like I've ever felt before. I've never felt pain like it.

But the, the hard part is, is doing things with one hand. It's really hard to get about your life with one hand. And it's. It's not like this is going to sound really like not right, but what I mean is.

So if I only had one arm, I'd probably be able to manage because I could use my shoulder or my knob or whatever was there to help hold things in place. But I can't because I can't. If I touch my fingers, my whole arm hurts. So I can't.

It's not like I can even use my fingers to rest things in place or anything like that. So I. I've got to somehow do things with one, one arm. Like even the washing up, so difficult because the plates just spin in the sink. So weird.

Even getting dressed, I can't fasten the button on my pants. I've had to buy more sweatpants. Honestly, absolute nightmare. Dumbest thing I've done all week. Probably toughest thing I'll do all year.

So annoyed with myself. Yeah, I will have an update for you in the next episode on how that is going. And that is all for this week.

Don't forget to check out Fluxo Media, where you can see more of my stuff, including links to all of my social media accounts. And you can join. That's a freebie plus there. And I'm going to leave you this week with another bad joke. I split my. I can't even say this one.

It's funny. I split my jeans up the butt seam. You could say that I wrecked them.