I remember it like it was blindingly yesterday. We bought a new couch. A magnificent, glorious couch. It was absolutely stunning.
The shopping was an epic, grueling odyssey. We crisscrossed the county—from my furniture store way out in the boonies to the cramped, over-priced places downtown—until we finally discovered the absolute right pattern. The pattern we both adored. It was incredible. It was some of the fanciest sh*t you’d ever lay eyes on. The most comfortable thing you'd ever walk, jump, or blissfully collapse onto.
Anyway, we finally acquired the thing. Getting it home was a whole other nightmare. We were maniacally careful, wrapping it up and supervising the transfer—which cost us a small mint—just to ensure the d*mn thing didn't get scratched, bumped, stained, or even looked at sideways.
Finally, the gorgeous beast was home. We spent the next hour speaking in hushed, reverent tones, moving it, turning it, nudging it here and there until it found its absolute, perfect, celestial spot in the living room. Everybody was happy.
We admired it for maybe five minutes.
Then she sprinted upstairs, came back down, and brandished the ugliest, f*cking plastic sh*t you ever saw: a couch cover. She smugly draped it over the new upholstery.
“This,” she declared, with the conviction of a zealous saint, “will protect it. No stains! No dirt! No wear! It will last forever!”
I looked at it. The sight was physically painful. “But that’s the ugliest bucket of wrong I’ve ever seen! We just worked our a**es off to get a nice, f*cking new couch, and now you’ve made it look like the crusty old one, covered in sh*tty plastic!”
Her only response was a triumphant, slightly condescending sigh-grant of, “I guess you’re right. But it will keep it nice and clean.”
And so, the reign of plastic terror began. The grandkids came over and parkoured on it. We hosted numerous Thanksgivings where they ate their entire dinner directly on it. Nothing—and I mean nothing—ever got on it. It stayed perfectly, unnaturally clean.
This went on for years. And years. And many more years.
Finally, one day we looked around and realized our entire living room was starting to look rather dated. The pattern on the couch, hidden beneath its plastic shroud, probably wouldn't fit the modern age. We decided it was time to get a new one.
We stripped off the atrocious plastic cover.
And there it was. That perfect, magnificent couch. The one we took a loan and a soul to acquire. It was in the most amazing shape. No stains. No tears. The springs were only slightly lower, but it still looked f*cking brand-new.
I stared at my wife. “We’ve had this couch for twenty years,” I said. “And it still looks perfect. But for those twenty years, wearing that ugly, sh*tty couch cover, it looked like absolute sh*t.”
Then I delivered my final, solemn vow:
“The next couch we buy, you try to put this f*cking couch cover on it, and I will bury you in the f*cking thing, with the couch.”
No comments:
Post a Comment