My Couch

2004-09-20 at 12:26 a.m.

I've been really busy with work and school. Trying to get another job. Keep your fingers crossed for me. This is a paper I wrote for english. Yes, its compensation for not posting.

Someday, when its still cold out, you open your door and suck in a breath. You realize spring is on its way. It�s the scent of a new season. When you buy a new car, it has a scent, too. Its so popular you can even buy �new car� air fresheners. And, finally, furniture has a scent. This �new furniture� scent is something I only recently discovered. Growing up, my family never bought new furniture. Like our couch? Goodwill, $50, and all it needed was a cover. Said with absolute pride. Dig that headboard? My uncle gave it away. Just gave it away! Whatta deal.

So, two Augusts ago, when I stepped out of the hot humid blinding sunlight through the shiny glass doors of Rooms-To-Go, it was a big deal. There was furniture everywhere. Tables with no scratches! Stuff that matched, not only the color, but the wood, too! Couches that were not some shade of orange! My fianc� and I ran around like kids unleashed in Toys R Us. His family is similar to mine. (Like our rug? Free! And it only cost $30 to clean.) We sat on every couch in that store. We sat on 10 of them twice. We felt like royalty. Sitting side by side in matching red micro fiber oversize chairs. �We want those lamps. We desire that coffee table and the matching end tables. We wish to add that couch. And definitely this chair.� Then we signed the dotted line and walked tall out of the store.

They delivered our furniture two weeks later. We�d never had something delivered before, and worried that we were supposed to tip the deliverymen. The day before, I consulted Emily Vanderbilt�s Book of Etiquette and discovered that no, we weren�t supposed to tip. But we should offer them a cold beverage. At two in the morning we bought distilled water and grape juice, just in case our tap water wasn�t good enough.

It went like clockwork the next morning. We got up early. My fianc� moved the dilapidated wing chair, our only living room furniture, into another room. I vacuumed. Ten minutes after 10, a guy with arms wider then my head knocked on the door. Looking up at him, my neck popped. He carried in our royalty chair. The next guy had a box under each arm. One for the lamps, one for our tables. The first and the third hauled in the sofa, sweating so hard I was glad we�d gotten the no stain coating. My fianc� said �Would you like a cold beverage?� like a butler out of a movie. They accepted. The third guy asked me to sign a form, and he called me Ma�am. Then, not 30 minutes after the first knock, they were gone. And I sat on my sofa, My brand new, never before parked on sofa. Which was beige, not orange.

For the first time in my life, I felt like a grownup. I finally owned something that cost more than I made in a month with the signing of that one carbon copy. And if you ever come over and say �Hey, that�s a nice sofa.� I�ll look at it in pride and say �Micro fiber. $700 dollars. And if you take the cover off, it still smells new.�

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