The Aerie

Couched in polite terms

My eldest son decided he wasn't interested in the computerized steering wheel that I picked out for his birthday. Apparently Midtown Madness and the Simpsons driving game held too little appeal, since we've had each for some time. So while his mother and sister went off to exchange his sister's birthday ring for a different one (picky kids eh?) I took the boys to the Micro Center to exchange the steering wheel for the Diablo Expansion Pack and Tribes II.

What followed next was, like all examples of life going slightly awry, caused by road construction.

We left the Micro Center, and I intended to jump back onto the freeway at the 36th street entrance. But the 36th street bridge was closed for repairs, so instead of turning we went straight. Straight past the Final Weekend Sale of the Unpainted Place.

Now I had recalled seeing this final weekend sale advertised on the television, and being on the market for a new couch it had caught my attention. Our old couch has been begging for replacement for ages.

I bought this couch when Theresa and I were courting and I lived in a (literally) closet-sized efficiency apartment. It was furnished with a castoff vinyl couch of my parents', so cracked and jagged that sitting down on it in shorts risked slicing open one's external iliac artery, being stuck to the vinyl, and bleeding to death. To say that it did not enhance necking is to understate the problem. Additionally, my bed was lofted into a tiny space above the desk.

So the logical answer at the time seemed to be a hide-a-bed.

The hideabed worked well when we were young, and rested lightly upon the earth. With the passage of time, however, the divers springs, crossbars, and bolts of the folding mattress made themselves more and more known. Unfortunately I had not considered the mass of this object when purchasing it, and my friend Keith eventually imposed a moratorium on further assistance in moving it out of concern for his spine. Finally our children made their own impressions upon the couch over the years, spilling various snack and bodily fluids on with childlike abandon.

So lately our couch has stopped being a couch, and has become something akin to a sour washrag wrapped around a brittle metallic skeleton. It has sags in certain places and smells in others that make sitting or lying upon it an adventure in mysterious bruises. Clearly it had to go.

So when I stumbled with the boys upon the closing sale for the Unpainted Place, I decided to inspect the situation.

Things looked good. Several varieties of couch were available for sale, and the salespeople from what I could overhear were inclined to take deep discounts in exchange for moving product. A sign into the back section of the store even encouraged bargaining with the words "Ask a representative for additional discounts!" While I'm not much of a haggler, I figured this would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

I called the wife and daughter, whose errand had taken them to nearby Robbinsdale, and told them to make haste in arriving here at the sale in order that the wife might select the appropriate couch. The boys and I then passed one of the most stultifying hours imaginable, wandering between a crowded furniture store crawling with hungry salespeople, and the less-than-stimulating environs of the store parking lot. Several increasingly impatient calls were made. First the wife and daughter had decided to stop and show off the daughter's new ring to my mother, who had provided as a birthday gift the original ring that had been exchanged. Then they were unable to head south on Highway 100 because of road construction, and gone several miles north in search of a place to turn around. Finally they arrived, by which time the boys were ready to be anywhere but in that store.

But I thought "no matter, we will soon have a delightful new couch, purchased at a discount." I hoped to rival the $500 dollar giant refridgerator that my wife had found, and the $2000 off the minivan which had been the result of a fortuitous clerical error in our favor.

We spent some time subjecting several couches with our buttocks, and discussing the impact of recliner footrests upon traffic through our tiny living room. The saleswoman, a middle-aged Latina with a raptor's gaze, spent considerable time driving off her fellow salespeople like an angry bird protecting its nest-eggs. Amidst the flutter, she confided in us that the couch we were inspecting was "the best bargain" in the store, in part because they "had 'way too many in stock."

My ears perked up at this slip of intelligence! Surely with her own words I would drive the bargain deeply into the armor of Profit, possibly even drawing the blood of Below Cost. I resisted the urge to rub my hands together.

Then disaster struck. Another couple came and sat down in "our" couch, and my wife, growing nervous, uttered the three words no bargain-hungry husband ever wants to hear: "We'll take it."

We'll take it? We'll TAKE it?

Just that morning, while donating clotting sells (a lengthy process called "apheresis") at the Red Cross, I happened to catch "Ghostbusters" on the cable. Doctors Venkman and Spengler were inspecting the ramshackle firehouse, accompanied by an avaricious real estate saleslady, and had launched into a lengthy description of its flaws. Suddenly Dr. Stantz - whose third mortgage was funding the venture - appeared at the top of a fireman's pole.

"Does this thing work?" he cried, and sliding down the pole announced, "We'll take it!" The real estate saleslady worked to suppress a smirk as Stantz ran back up the stairs, crying "We should sleep here! Tonight!"

Only a few hours later, and there I was, re-creating that dread scene. With three simple words my spouse had disarmed and emasculated me, making negotiations an impossibility. "We'll take it."

So the couch is on the way, and I will have to work several extra hours to make up for the difference in price. But I wasn't too angry with my apologetic wife. After I upbraided her for her nervous outburst, I had to confess that she still had a lot of credit earned from saving us $1000 on a $1500 refrigerator.

Besides, I thought to myself as we drove home to await the delivery of our new piece of furniture, I'll get my revenge.

I'm blogging this...

Posted by Albatross at August 22, 2004 1:22 PM