New Couch

As of yesterday, I have a new couch. I picked it up from the side of the road. Before y'all tell me that's gross, let me tell you what would be grosser: paying hundreds of dollars for a new one. Perhaps you'd prefer to hear I won the couch on "The Price Is Right." But imagine all that could go wrong on that show: I could trip while "coming on down," get embarrassed when my $1 bid is trumped by some smartass' $2 bid, face the awkward dilemma of whether to kiss Bob Barker on the cheek or the lips, and get booed by the audience when I fail to spin the wheel all the way around. Is all that really worth it for a couch? Suddenly, the side of the road doesn't seem so bad.

So what if my new couch is dirty? I'll clean it. Maybe. And so what if my new couch is only "new" to me? A couch isn't the worst thing I could get from the street. It's not like I picked up a prostitute. Well, not yesterday, anyway.

Raumene and I had one hell of a time getting it home. It was too big for my trunk, but we lodged it in as best we could, leaving it dangling precariously out the back. Traveling slowly, we seemed to have no problems, until we got to one of the busiest roads in town and heard the couch fall out. It had waited until the most inconvenient time to free itself and block traffic. We had to turn around to fetch it, and I can only imagine what the other drivers were thinking when they found themselves having to swerve to avoid a sofa in the road. After putting on the hazard lights, we did our best to shove it back in, but this time it wouldn't fit. Lots of people stopped to watch, some just to laugh at the idiots trying to cram a couch into a trunk far too small, others because we were in their way.

Eventually, we got it home, and I was overcome by a sense of accomplishment. Also, the scent of mold. Damn, this is going to be a great couch.