The Year: 1994.

The Bed: Felicity’s Tall-Post Bed with Tester, life-sized version.

Status: Did not receive. Life-sized version apparently never existed, and was the result of some mistaken conclusions I drew from my friend Paige’s American Girl Doll-themed birthday party.

The Year: 1994.

The Bed: Polly Pocket bed.

Status: Did not exist. Still doesn’t. This picture is from an antique trading website and is listed as “Shell Bed for Little Girl Nacre Painted” and costs $37,000.

The Year: 1995.

The Bed: A canopy bed like my friend Nicole’s. It’s hard to describe. If her parents still have it up in her old bedroom I can show you sometime but only if they’re okay with having people over. I feel like the canopy was somehow stapled to the ceiling maybe? And there was this filmy white gauze that sort of cascaded down in places where you’d maybe expect the posts to be, and I think those white Christmas lights were attached too.

Status: Only during sleepovers.

The Year: 1996

The Bed: Indoor hammock, like the kind I saw my good friends Gilligan and the Skipper sleep in every afternoon in syndication after school.

Status: “You’ll get back problems.” Shortly thereafter, an outdoor hammock with white-and-navy stripes appeared in the backyard, but its use was strictly limited to my father, for some reason. Now fairly low down on my list of resentments against my father, but still present. I would not have gotten back problems. I would have been thrillingly happy.

The Year: 1997.

The Bed: Hey Arnold’s entire bedroom from Hey Arnold. I was very into “mechanisms” that year. I think he had a Murphy bed? But mostly I wanted the skylights, and a mixed-use walkable urban environment.

Status: Single-use, automobile-dependent suburban environment. Plus no one really “got me” at the time.

The Year: 1998.

The Bed: Did not care about bed this year. Wanted the motorized closet Cher had in Clueless.

Status: Settled for pink feather pen like the kind Cher had in the credits to the TV spinoff version of Clueless.

The Year: 1999.

The Bed: Inflatable blue vinyl bed from Delia’s catalog. I don’t remember how they spelled it. DeLi*’s?

Status: I might have made it up. They might have only sold an inflatable blue vinyl chair. Uncertain.

The Year: 2000.

The Bed: Bunk bed Bunk bed Bunk bed Bunk bed all day long my thoughts beat to the tune of Bunk bed it wasn’t practical but Bunk bed let me bunk the bed

Status: No bunk bed.

The Year: 2000

The Bed: Queen-sized anything. Too old for blue-and-white trundle bed, besides which there was no one to trundle in it, since by this point I hadn’t shared a room with anyone since 1994. That hadn’t gotten in the way of my wanting a bunk bed the year previous, but it was worse having that logic used against me later, somehow.

Status: Acquired.

The Year: 2001

The Bed: Felt I ought to be happy with the bed I already had “because of 9/11” somehow.

Status: “That doesn’t seem quite right, somehow.”

The Chatner

Every Bed I Wanted Between The Years 1994 and…