How J Types Go About Purchasing a Pillow

It’s a sad thing when you wake up injured! I always thought of my bed as a safe place, but I was mistaken! The bed has been infiltrated by an enemy! That enemy is my pillow!

My $15 Laura Ashley Extra Firm Pillow from Bed Bath and Beyond may not seem like an enemy, but when she goes flat, she can become lethal. Just ask my shoulder, which now has a knot the size of a meatball.

I made the familiar trip to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy yet another $15 pillow when I spied an aisle display of boxed pillows. The sleeping woman on the front of the box looked so serene! However, I could buy 4 Laura Ashley’s for the price of this one. “Yes, but this pillow has a memory!” I thought. It said so right on the box. I said my farewell to Laura and picked up my pillow in a box cradling it in my arms. “But what’s this?” I observed. “A carrying handle?” I carried my pillow like a suitcase up to the cashier with high hopes of a peaceful night of sound and restorative slumber.

I was feeling so inspired by my new super pillow, that I even decided to spring for a satin pillowcase. It just felt wrong to put a pillow with a memory into an old cotton case. Plus I had read an article called 8 ways to get more beautiful while you sleep and reason number 5 was to sleep on satin.

Turns out this pillow was too hard. The knot in my shoulder was now the size of a golf ball. I took it out of its gossamer sheath, put it back into the suitcase box and headed straight back to the BBB. Since I had lost the receipt (in one day) BBB would only give me a store credit. Now I was locked into the $59 price range. No going back to Laura Ashley now. I went to another display of BOXED pillows, to find the As Seen on TV: My Pillow! There on the front of the box was a fully grown man with a mustache hugging his pillow!  What happened to the peaceful sleeping woman? This pillow bragged of having patented interlocking foam and MILLIONS of satisfied users! But did I really want to buy a pillow that this creepy man had created? I had no choice. The other pillows were even more expensive and this box also had a handle. At the cashier I noticed an old woman purchasing a My Pillow also and thought to myself, “If it works for her older arthritic neck, certainly it will work for my younger middle-aged neck.

This pillow was too soft. Is this story starting to sound familiar? When will I find the creepy man with the mustache sleeping in my bed, sitting on my chair, eating my porridge etc.? It went totally flat throughout the night and now the knot on my shoulder was the size of a grapefruit.

Back to BBB and now I am truly stuck. I am now in the next price point, DELUXE pillow land! I had no idea, it could be so fun pressing down on the soft memory foam and watching it slowly rise back up, as if it was alive. I chose the Temper Pedic Cloud. There was no sleeping woman on the box, nor was there a mustached man. There was a joyous couple laughing and looking at each other as if they had a private, delightful secret. Maybe that secret was a comfortable night’s sleep,  or maybe something even better than that? This could be my future. But $129 for a pillow? I even forgot to bring my 20% off BBB coupon. I walked past Laura Ashley in her plastic wrapper, thinking she was looking a lot more attractive. I could buy 8 Laura’s for the price of this one Cloud.

So you know how the story ends for Goldilocks, right?  Not the big bad wolf part, but the “just right” part? This story DOESN’T end that way and I didn’t get the Cloud. But this story is a testament to the J in my temperament because I kept persevering until I wound up with a water pillow purchased from the chiropractor’s office. No creepy man on the cover, no $129 price tag and no more grapefruit in my shoulder. The Judging function feels better after completing a task, whereas the perceiving function enjoys the beginning of a task more. P’s love all the possibilities and out of the box thinking, whereas J’s prefer closure and checking things off their list. One water pillow: check! One happy neck: check!