My wife and I are working our way through our seventh furniture store of the day, looking for just the right covering to go on our new sofa, when I realize that we have completely lost our minds. This is actually our third visit to this particular store and we’ve almost made up our minds to buy the sofa we’re sitting on, but we just can’t seem take the final step. I’ve never really thought very much about furniture before and my brain has started to leak out of my ears at this point.
“I know you’ll really like this fabric,” the saleslady tells us. “It’s got a lot of sincerity.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Excuse me?” she replies, looking a little surprised. I can tell that fabric sincerity is one of those topics that she’s never been called on before. I’ve just about reached my breaking-point however and I decide that I really can’t let this one slip by me.
“Well, I’m just a little confused,” I say in my best golly-I’m-such-a-dope tone of voice. “Usually, when someone says something is sincere, they’re referring to a character trait – like a person who isn’t very stuck-up, someone who has made peace with their place in the world. Is that what you’re saying about this throw pillow?”
“Um, yes?” she guesses.
“Okay, good,” I respond, dodging a dangerous glare from my wife, “because I hate that artificial fabric.”
Our saleslady (who in all fairness shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of epistemological hair-splitting) stares at me in confused silence, then decides to plow right into the next topic. She asks if we would want the fabric with stain protection. “It’s a little more expensive,” she tells us, “but totally worth it. Anything you spill on it just beads up, so you can clean it up with a paper towel – juice, wine, anything!”
“What about flaming gasoline?” I ask.
“Um, no; probably not that,” she says looking even more confused and worried, wondering just what sort of house we live in. “It should stand up to the usual types of stains, though.” She looks more closely at me and suddenly realizes that I’m probably not dangerous; I’m just another subspecies of an animal she’s very familiar with – a man who has been shown one ottoman too many and has lost the will to live. She decides to change her approach.
“I’ll bet you’ve seen a lot of fabric samples this week, haven’t you?” she asks more kindly. “You’ve been in here a couple of times already.”
We both nod. “We’re kind of like the vultures in one of those nature documentaries you see on tv,” I tell her. “We just swoop in for a quick look at first, then leave before we can buy into something that isn’t dead yet. We have to wait until a piece of furniture is really ripe and bloated before we can commit to it.” My wife sighs beside me. I choose to believe that she’s expressing her weariness with furniture shopping, rather than with her husband.
The saleslady takes a second to process all this.
“And what about this sofa?” she asks. “Is it dead yet?” (It’s at this point that I start to like her.)
We both look at my wife, who thinks hard for a moment, then nods thoughtfully.
“Yes,” she responds after a moment. “It’s pretty stinky.”
“Excellent!” the saleslady replies and starts filling out the order form. She is halfway through the paperwork, when the store manager stops by our little artificial living room.
“Finding everything you need?” she asks.
We nod.
“Excellent! Well, Mrs. Murgytroid can certainly help you out with all that.” She looks more closely at us. “Haven’t you been in a couple of times already this week?”
We all nod and our saleslady looks up from her paperwork. “Yes,” she says brightly. “They’re vultures!”
We all beam, and the manager nods in confusion and shuffles away, looking over her shoulder at us.
In the end, we order not only the sofa, but a matching armchair and loveseat, as well as a dining room table.
“Now, will you want a coffee table, too?” Mrs. Murgytroid asks us.
We do, but not the one on display with this sofa, so she starts to walk back to the office to find us a catalogue.
“You realize,” I call after her, “that if you can’t find us the right coffee table, the whole deal’s off.”
She stops dead in her tracks for a second, then calls over her shoulder, without looking back at me, “Don’t make me kill you, Mr. Fladd!”
I decide that I like her quite a lot and smile softly to myself, until I turn to ask my wife a question and am shocked by the sheer venom in her glare.
“I am never taking you furniture-shopping again!” she hisses at me.
That promise alone makes this whole experience worthwhile for me.
