Couch potato

My wife informed me the other day that she intended to buy a new sofa.

“But we already have a sofa,” I said.

She glared at me and said she didn’t want something that was old, worn out, dirty, out-of-style, and needed to be replaced in her house anymore. At least I THINK she was talking about the sofa.

She showed me the one she was getting and, after I was revived from passing out when I saw the price tag, I allowed that it was a nice sofa, and should make for some pleasant, comfortable afternoon naps.

“Oh, no,” she said. “You can’t lie on this sofa.”

Now hold on just a cotton-pickin’ minute here. I’m ok with the fact that we have entire cabinets full of dishes and china that I’m not allowed to use. I made peace with the fact that I’m not supposed to dry my hands (or anything else, apparently) on the perfectly usable hand towels in the downstairs bathroom. I’ve accepted that cutting my toenails in bed is not conducive to a harmonious household – though in my defense, I only did it on MY side of the bed.

Anyway, my point is, there are certain concessions and compromises you have to make in life. But what good is a sofa you can’t lie on?

I am not going to give up lying on the couch and watching sports on my ridiculously large TV. It’s one of my hobbies.

I’m kidding. It’s my ONLY hobby.

I made this point and my wife said that we could move the old sofa upstairs to the bonus room, and I could lie on it there. Well, there are a couple of problems with that. For one, our bonus room looks like a highway underpass where homeless people live, minus the homeless people. And more importantly, there is no TV in there.

Well, she says, we can “fix it up.” Get a new TV to go in there. Clear out my prized record album collection, to which I am very attached even though I haven’t had a working turntable since before the Berlin Wall fell.

I don’t think this bonus room thing is going to happen, and I think I’m going to be reduced to taking naps on the floor, next to the dog, who is flatulent and snores violently. This is not working out well for me – I’ve been tricked.

At least I got to approve the sofa purchase. You have to watch women or they’ll sneak stuff in on you when you’re not looking. I just happened to notice what appeared to be some new pictures hanging on the wall of the bathroom the other day, so I asked about them.

“Yes,” my wife said. “I bought new pictures.”

“But what was wrong with the pictures we had in there before?”

“They were old,” she said.

Uh, hello – have you ever been to a museum? EVERY picture in there is old. It’s what makes them good. Do you think they’re going to go and replace the Mona Lisa because somebody saw a cute picture of an Amish family having a picnic in Kirkland’s? If it’s good enough for The Louvre, it’s good enough for my loo.

Did cavemen go through this? I picture the following happening after a Neanderthal walks into his cave one day and looks around:

Man: “Honey, what happened to the picture I drew on the wall of me hunting a bison?”

Woman: “Oh, I got rid of that. I didn’t like it.”

Man: “OK, but do you realize that was, like, the first attempt at language in the history of man, and that one day historians and archaeologists can use it to learn how we lived?”

Woman: “It was old. Oh, and by the way, they’re delivering a new rock to the cave tomorrow. You can’t lie on it. We’re moving your old rock to the bonus cave.”

Hopefully he at least had a TV in there.