Sometimes you just need a hammock.
I don’t know why this is, but it is clear that I’m not alone in my compulsion to have a hammock inside my own home. I had only been living with roommates for two months when the first hammock appeared, slung from an exposed beam on the third floor of a house by a pair of singing society members who wanted a place to read on sunny afternoons. Well over a year later, the hammocks proliferate: there’s one above my bed and another in front of my dresser; there’s one on the roof outside my window and another on the roof down the hall where I can lie supine as I watch students ultimate frisbee below me. There’s even one in my bathroom. The last time I used it, the hook fell out of the ceiling while I was swinging gently over the bathtub and I ended up with a mild concussion at four o’clock in the morning when I banged my head on the toilet. But hey, no pain—no gain or whatever, right?
There are also two that don’t belong to me but hang just outside my room. The first belongs to our house president who keeps his hammock unoccupied until he feels like sleeping there, which is usually about once every three weeks. Many people have gone into his room (a big honor) only to find him fast asleep in it. We’ve been born witness to many miraculous acts performed by said president, but the greatest is without question his ability to conk out in under five seconds flat. I’ve seen him close his eyes and enter a deep coma faster than it took me to open and read the first page of this article.
The other belongs to my good friend Mike who slept in it every night for the first month he lived here before deciding that it was too hot. Being from California, he’s still unhappy with just how cold New England gets at night even though I told him about December and January. He doesn’t believe me till February or March rolls around again, which will probably be thirty minutes after we accept his unconditional surrender and convince him to come back home so we can look out for him like we promised our parents we would.
There are also hammocks outside on the ground level, by our sand volleyball court and at the top of the grassy hill leading to it. The sand volleyball players hang out there during club hours whenever they want to chitchat or chat with each other about their intense feelings of intense friendship. On weekends, one side will hang on for dear life until some brave soul decides that what that group needs is a good old-fashioned game of beer pong up that wazoo. Then sand everywhere turns into one big slip ‘n slide mixed with broken dreams as everyone slides backward invariably causing some unfortunate soul who happened to be sitting too close to the edge to eat it face-first in the mud under someone else’s bare feet.
Can you put a hammock in your living room?
I have no idea why I asked my dad this question. He’s not a very good source of information on things like hammocks and potty training. But he tried anyway, saying that it depends on whether or not your living room has any beams; if there is nothing to hang the hammock from then you’re better off looking for someplace else in your home where you can sling it. So unless you happen to live in a log cabin (and even then) and own an actual couch (why?), it would be impossible for you to sleep out on the living room floor—not without starting an intense termite infestation which leads me to wonder who might benefit from such a thing.
As much as I’d love for you to try, if your only option is to wire the hammock up like some kind of deranged marionette or put it around your waist and wear it out then I’d say that you might be better off with a nice piece of floor. No one has ever fallen asleep on any solid surface (floor, wall, ceiling) with their eyes open; it’s not physically possible. If you were awake when you tried this, what would happen is that the eyelids would slowly begin to shut themselves as though they had no idea how they ended up in such bizarre surroundings.
Can you hang a hammock from wall studs?
Yes. Well, maybe. I don’t know what a wall stud is except for something you need to hit with a hammer if your house is made out of wood. My dad didn’t have much luck with this one either, saying that he’d be surprised if it worked well enough to prevent the hammock from falling completely. The main problem is that unless you were planning on tying each end off separately then you would need some kind of support in the middle where the weight was shared by both sides equally, which leads me to wonder why you would want to buy a hammock in the first place—why not just take up tai chi instead?
It’s nothing against tai chi or hippies or anything like that. I’m just not sure why you would buy one of these things in the first place or what kind of person could expect to have enough money to pay for it. It’s just a sheet with two strings attached to each end—and while I can see how that might be useful if someone were trying to kill you by hanging you up, there are probably better ways of doing this which don’t involve spending over $100 on something made out of rat poison and old newspapers.
Can you make your hammock?
es again except my dad said he’d never tried it himself. After seeing some of his earlier experiments at home improvement, this is no surprise. He did say that making your own would be cheaper than buying one because they are fairly expensive, especially if you aren’t using them to kill people. Plus they take up a good amount of space which is the last thing most people need in their homes since everything else already takes up enough room as it is.
Bedroom hammock with stand
This is not something you want to buy unless you plan on sleeping in it and can afford the $300 that they’re asking for it online. There’s no way you can spend $300 on a hammock without also buying a yacht or at least hiring someone who has time to paint landscapes, so this thing must be nice—but what makes it so nice? The website says they’re hand made by Guatemalan artisans using “exclusive Costa Rican laying knot” but all that tells me is that they put fewer letters in their words than I do which isn’t saying much since I was writing this out of spite and couldn’t care less if I ever finished it.
Trying to make sense of what they are selling is exactly why I’m not in marketing, because if things like this are any indication then the only real job market for me is teaching English in China. At least that way I can get paid enough to buy my hammock and be done with it instead of having to pay someone else just so I have a place to sleep at night. It might seem weird when you put it that way but trust me—it’s either that or go crawling back home in defeat which no one would want to see anyway since there’s nothing worse than letting your parents know how badly Santa let you down this year when all you wanted was an iPod but ended up getting them a plain old bag of coal instead.
