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David Perry

Warning: Burning mattress hangtags may be dangerous

This week we take a break from the diet of serious mattress commentary that we usually provide in this space and look at some of the strange ways that mattresses make the news. 

* Headline: “Fire spreads when woman tries to burn mattress tag.” The story in the Syracuse, N.Y., Post-Standard reported that a Syracuse woman who attempted to burn the safety tags off a mattress was charged with arson after setting her bathroom on fire, police said. 

The woman “had no luck tearing or cutting the tags, so she tried to burn them off with her lighter,” the story said. Soon the mattress caught fire and the woman dragged it from her bedroom to a bathroom. The burning bed caught the bathroom on fire. The woman was charged with fifth-degree arson, a felony, the story said. 

* Headline: “Officer stops driver dragging fiery mattress.” This story, from Kansas City, Kan., said a police sergeant saved a driver when he stopped a car dragging a burning mattress. The story, on www.KCTV5.com, said: “Just before 3:30 a.m., the officer said he spotted a station wagon dragging the fiery mattress. He used his car’s loud speaker to try to get the driver’s attention, but the driver didn’t initially stop. The car finally stopped near North Seventh Street and Stewart Avenue, not long before the car became completely engulfed in fire.”
Police said the fire started after the car drove over a mattress “and the springs inside the mattress started sparking from friction with the pavement. That sparked an engine fire.” The driver was not injured. 

* Headline: “Valentine’s dinner sets apartment ablaze.” The story, from The North Bay Nugget in North Bay, Ontario, said a man was having a romantic fondue dinner with his friend when “a few tablespoons of oil from the burner fell on her leg and on the edge of the mattress.” The mattress soon “turned bright orange” and firefighters were called to extinguish the “massive blaze.” 

* Headline: “Man dies when wind flips mattress he was moving.” That story was datelined Mount Juliet, Tenn. An Associated Press story carried by FOXNews.com reported the following: “High winds are blamed for the death of a man who died when a mattress he was sitting on was blown off the back of a pickup truck.”
The story said the wind flipped the mattress and the man fell and hit his head on the road. He later died. 

After reading those bizarre stories, it occurs to me that we may need to add some messages to our hangtags: “Warning: Do not attempt to burn this hangtag. Do not run over a mattress with your car. Do not have fondue dinners next to your mattress. And be careful when transporting mattresses in pickup trucks on windy days.”
Or maybe the point of all these stories is a little simpler: Don’t do dumb things with your mattress.