I was scanning through my yahoo! mail when I saw the words that should make anyone shudder. The local freecycle group (if you haven't checked into these groups, you should!) had a posting from one of the members offering a hide-a-bed.

Hide-a-beds are, in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions, the devil! They are the fruitcake of furniture, pieces that nobody ever seems to buy, yet that somehow everyone ends up owning. After our last move, and the twisting, turning and contorting of that behemoth that is the hide-a-bed, I made a vow to all that is holy to never EVER own one again. And gave my wife instructions that she was to smack me if I ever even CONSIDERED it!

Looking back, I cannot count the times I've been to a rummage sale to see a lovely sofa, only to discover the evilly twisting springs and the bar that was designed by Satan himself to land square in the middle of the back of anyone who dared ATTEMPT to sleep on his evil contraption. No, the only comfortable way to sleep on a hide-a-bed is without removing the cushions, and with your head comfortably resting on either arms. Unfold the bed (the words "unfold" and "bed" are, by their very nature, wholly incompatible in the first place), and you've consigned yourself to a level of discomfort that can only be fixed by seven visits to a chiropractor and two to a cute French masseusse.

I did not reply to the freecycle lady, although my sympathies are with her. If she lived in a college town, she could probably find a college student naive enough to believe they can use the hide-a-bed to convert their living room into extra space for another roommate. But college towns are few and far between in this neck of the woods, and most people have already been made aware of the diabolical contraption that is the hide-a-bed.