{Please have a sense of humor and enjoy the concept, don't you wish you had a cradle to fuck in?}
[Self-rocking is encouraged if you have no one to cuddle with.]
I own the first, I own the patent, and I owe it all to my Daddy. I don't doubt you have heard of it, the Cradle Bed. "Sleep like a baby, in a Cradle Bed", the slogan that is on TV, and in magazines everywhere. Not to mention "Winken, Bliken and Nod" sheets, blankets and pillows, including the Hushabye Brand, down comforters; filled with "Mother Goose" feathers. As well as of course the equally famous self-rocking Bougher's Rockabye Tree Topnotch Hammocks, "Bougher gives you the break you need to come down from all your stress!".
Yeah, I'm that Baby, and my father is inventor, founder and CEO of the storied BedTime Industries; Sanders Manfred (The Sandman) Bougher. Now that I'm twenty-one, I was made president of Sleepy-Time Mattress Sets. My brother, Hyram Bertram Nathaniel (Hy-Ber-Nate) Bougher, runs Sandman Medicine, the "all natural pills for Sweet Dreams". While my mother is director of Lullabye Melodies, sound systems and mood music for sleep enhancement. My older sister designs the Lancelot Lamps (Knight-lights for boys) and Will-o-the-Wisp Fairy Glow Globes (for girls). My kid brother has developed his own line of personal lubricants, Nocturnal Emulsions.
We have nothing to do with my uncle 'Rip' Bougher who sells luxury coffins, "Try one, they're Heavenly! People do, they have one with a side cut-away in the showroom that folks get in! But my cousin, Rose, Rip's daughter, does head our cosmetic line of Sleeping Beauty, overnight facial cream and mud-masques. "Go to bed looking like a nightmare, but wake to be the fairest of them all!" Dad says we Boughers don't 'own' the night, we just sell it! It's true of course, our family's influence on the sleeping habits and comfort levels of modern society have dominated the market and customs for a generation.
If you live anywhere this side of the moon, and have any kind of media access at all, you have seen me. But not the adult me, the baby me was the one in that first black and white television commercial for the self-rocking canopy bed my father invented. (I'm still just as cute, but now sexy also!) The Cradle first became popular with movies stars, then every one of the rich and famous had to get one. Soon less expensive models were available for the middle-class. We still use the color photos of me as an infant, asleep on the big Cradle Bed. It works of course, or our family fortune would have never been made. Forget the vibrating beds, the water beds, the guaranteed springs or fancy foam mattresses, what comfort they offer is fine. But the natural rocking motion will always do the trick to get you to sleep.
It's in our genes, and I don't mean the Bougher's family tree, I refer to the human genome. Our ancestors found their safety sleeping in trees for millions of years, before we climbed down to the savanna. So naturally, the swaying motion as we sleep, is a peaceful feeling, it helps us to rest and relax and feel secure. That's why ancient mothers, and modern, rock their babies to sleep; in their arms, or way back when - in a crib that was swung from a tree limb, like the nursery rhyme. The rocking-cradle is an invention that goes back to prehistoric times. My father saw that the only reason that adults didn't have cradles was that there was no one to rock them to sleep. Until he used an electric motor and some simple engineering.
Unlike that girl with the fold-out couch, I stayed out of the limelight while I grew up. I still think we missed the boat on not copyrighting the name DreamWorks for one of our many companies. But we have the night-time market covered; our spreadsheets are very in the black. They have been since white and bright for bed-linens were in. (Grandfather was in the bleach business, ironically named SunShine Lighteners.) Anyway, you are not here to hear about our mattress business, but what business of ours happened on my mattress. Namely how the Sandman rocked Baby. Daddy always called me Baby, like with Jennifer Grey in 'Dirty Dancing'. But when he showed me how I was conceived on the prototype, the same one I own, how he got his rocks off with mom; then he rocked my world and left me dazed one night!
So here goes.
Having just turned twenty-one and been made president of Sleepy-Time Mattress Sets, I decided it was time to move out of the family mansion and get a place of my own. I bought all the furniture and decorated the home myself. Of course the Master, no make that Mistress bedroom, featured as its central item the prototype, the first Cradle Bed. The same one used in the original commercial. The patent was my eighteenth birthday gift; the royalties were my trust fund. The promotion to head of the mattress company was for my majority birthday just past. I suppose I shall be stuck with being "Mistress of Mattresses", but the moniker will be secretly ironic as well, as I became my father's paramour on the famous bed.
I had invited my parents over for dinner and to see what I had done with the property. I was quite proud of the tasteful settings I had wrought in the ten room cottage. It was just me living there, no boyfriend currently, and no husband material was anywhere on the horizon. Mom couldn't make it back from LA; there was a concert of some fella she was eager to sign for her company, which she needed to attend. Dad came alone and no siblings were invited that evening. So it was just Sandy, and Baby, alone together with great food and too much chilled wine. (Catered, I'm not super woman in the kitchen.) After dinner, I provided the dollar tour to dad. The piece de resistance was my boudoir.
Dad knew the Cradle was there, as I had slept in it since I was six. But he started to chuckle when he saw it and I asked him why?
"Because Baby, you have it in the same position, dead center on the back wall, as your mother and I did when I first made the monster. That beast took up our whole little bedroom almost; our place was so small at the time. But I bet you don't have any idea what made the thing sell in the first place, do you?"
"Not its tranquil properties?"
"Well, those too, but there is more to the story. No, I had a few exclusive clients that I had to explain the other benefits to, privately. And some I even showed home movies to, to make the first few sales to them."
"Of me sleeping on the bed? Is that where you got the idea for the commercial?"
"No, . . Mmm . . I guess you're old enough to know."
"Can I see the film clips?"
"Your mother made me destroy the copies after the business took off."
"Then tell me about what was on them!" I said a little frustrated and showing my pique."
"Sex."
