We No Longer Have a Couch
Now and again, I’ll get a refreshingly honest parenting story that proves my insanity is shared.
Case in point: A friend of mine recently made a decision that seemed perfectly reasonable right up to the point you realize you’re out a few grand and you’re standing in your living room with absolutely nothing to sit on.
His boys, three and six, wouldn’t stop jumping on the couch.
He and his wife tried asking nicely.
Tried asking not-so-nicely.
They threatened.
They yelled.
The jumping persisted.
So they threw the couch out.
Not metaphorically.
With his wife on board, the two hoisted the sucker up and out onto the front curb, where it sat awaiting bulk pickup.
Just like that.
Problem solved.
Or created?
Somewhere between teaching their sons that their actions have consequences and should we buy a few foldable lawn chairs? they wondered if perhaps they had overplayed their hand.
If you’re not familiar with bulk garbage pickup, it’s truly something else. Imagine the streets of your well-coiffed neighborhood suddenly transforming into a whiskey tango dump for no apparent reason.
A couple times a year, you wake to find toilets, broken furniture, car seats (not the ones we safely strap our babies into, but rather an entire back seat of a car) and nasty mattresses piled high on your neighbors’ front lawns until the bulk garbage man comes to collect.
This can sometimes take days.
And just when you think you’ve seen the last of it, it happens again, which leads me to think, What in the heck else do these people have tucked into the four walls of their mid-sized suburban homes? They never miss an opportunity to come up with offerings for the Gods of bulk.
My friend offered up his perfectly good Crate & Barrel sofa.
Which, as the days passed, began to feel like maybe a bit of an overreaction.
With nowhere to lounge inside, he’d mosey outside for his morning coffee, sit on his discarded couch and privately contemplate the repercussions of his own actions. We could’ve reupholstered it, sold it, donated it…
But they had committed.
And I’ve got to hand it to them. They didn’t blink.
He could hear the repetitive roar of the engine and the screeching of the brakes from down the road, so he pulled up the blinds and beckoned his two boys to come witness the demise of their beloved playground. The truck stopped, stretched out its massive mechanical arm, grabbed the couch and, snap!, broke it roughly in half.
The two kiddos stared, jaws dropped, eyes wide, at the gruesomeness of it all.
When it came time to deposit the broken sofa into the dumpster, it really got ugly. It took about nine loud, unrelenting and aggressive thrusts until the couch finally succumbed, shattered into bits and disappeared before their very eyes.
Traumatized, his older boy bellowed, “You’re so meeeeeaaaan,” then turned to find Mom.
Though wanting to portray empathy, the corners of my friend’s mouth turned up ever so slightly. I’ve lost a few thousand dollars, taken my morning coffee on the curb in 100-degree heat and lived furnitureless for a couple of days all to prove a point.
When Dad says stop jumping on the couch, you can bet your fucking ass (and one couch) he means it.