stephenAmurphy.com

It was love at first sight.

I walked into Wimberly’s furniture store in Quinton and my gaze immediately latched onto a beautiful dark chocolate-y brown leather loveseat couch. I walked over to it, petted it affectionately, and knew that it was the one.

I gave my puppy-eyes look to my mother, who was in town helping me furnish my new apartment. She agreed begrudgingly.

Yes, I thought that it was my dream couch. Incredible comfort, a built-in cup holder, it seemed like a 20-something-year-old’s fantasy. But little did I know that it would become a nightmare of mythic proportions.

I’ve had that couch for two months, and don’t get me wrong, I am still a big fan. It is comfortable and easy to clean. But there is one glaring problem.

The cracks and crevices of the couch are evil. The couch has an appetite the size of Kobayashi’s (or should I say Joey Chestnut?) and they don’t like spitting anything out.

This isn’t an old fashioned couch where you can simply remove the cushions so to see if something fell into it; you need to squeeze your arm into the side of the couch or lay down on the ground and try to crawl underneath it when it’s reclined to see if anything made it to the ground. It’s not an easy task, and one that I have had to do far too often in recent weeks.

But last week, the couch had gone too far. Its twisted sense of humor had crossed the line.

I was watching Lebron James and the Cavaliers continue their playoff run on ESPN. Like any modest sports fan, I like me some Lebron. But as games tend to do, it ended and the network proceeded to its next scheduled programming.

It was NASCAR.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disapprove of the NASCAR crowd. People love it, and good for them. After all, I’m a soccer fan and most of America can’t come to grips with that, so I’m not about to critique another person’s tastes in sports. But I, for one, can’t watch it. I refuse to.

I may be living in the Midwest, and there are some things I have allowed myself to do (say y’all and howdy, fire a gun). And there are many more things that I will allow myself to do. And perhaps NASCAR will fit into the latter category one day. But not today. At least so I thought.

But on this particular day, I had no choice.

The remote had been swallowed and since I was in an online poker tournament with internet access only in my living room, I couldn’t leave my couch. I was being forced to watch NASCAR. Yes, it’s a cruel and funny world.

(By the way, the phrase “cruel and funny world” reminded me of the Toby Keith song, “How do you like me now?” Yes, I am officially getting in too deep.)

Because I have one of those new age TVs that don’t expect people to ever need to approach it to touch it, it doesn’t have a power button or a button to lower the volume. So for the next several minutes, I watched a lot of people make a lot of left turns. It was enthralling.

Finally, my poker tournament ended and I went to get my emergency flashlight that I keep for tornados and power outages and I searched the couch. I felt like a surgeon as I masterfully and delicately removed the remote from the beast’s grasp.

It may look ridiculous, but I am seriously considered scotch-taping some string onto the remote and pasting it to my wall so that never happens again. Anyone have any better ideas?