The Story of a Couch
All it took was a reply to a local classified ad in attempt to fill an empty space. He just wanted to stop the voices bouncing off the walls of an empty room. Little did we know what was coming and how it could amount to this.
It was a regular Saturday in the Autumn of 2008, it was my father's first weekend off surrounding the few months he had been running around Vietnam doing super important business things. It was time for a bit of home improvement. No more than ten words caught his eye; the advertisement that started it all. "House sale due to relocation. Everything to go."
We expected him to come home with a few things, maybe a television stand, maybe a dining table or a few measly appliances at most. But nothing like this. I remember I was sat with my mother on this late 1980's or early 90's styled sofa with pink floral prints and tall arm rests with little scratched buttons following the indentation of the inside structure. The same sofa that is in all of my baby photos. We sat in the front room when our two dogs start barking and yelping and jumping about in pure excitement as they do whenever anybody comes to visit. Except this time around it was not a visitor, nor was it the same car my father left with that morning yet a completely unfamiliar vehicle.
"Oh for fucks sake!!" My mother says as she slides upright in her seat and bangs the television remote onto the vintage wooden framed glass coffee table in front of us. My eyes jolt from where Dr. Phil was counselling another dysfunctional family, to this big white moving truck rolling down into the outside of the back doors.
My Mum's guess was right, it was my Father driving. He parks this truck and swings himself out of the seat taller than my head, walks around and greets Mum with the same goofy face he has when he's ridiculously proud of himself. The heavy white doors swing open with a bang to reveal what the fuck he had just done. Anything could have been in there, but today, this Saturday in Autumn 2008 we were presented with this ridiculous second hand ten foot dark grey couch. It really wasn't all that pretty, and definitely something we did not expect to fit into Dad's interior design style.
Little did we know then, but this $80 impulse buy would be the start of something bigger than what it already was. This is where years of memories would exist, where we would lounge under the aircon in what always feels like Australia's hottest summer yet, where we would go for only the best blissful naps, where our big black Labrador would soon fall just as in love with it as we were and inevitably take over and claim it for his own.
But as life goes all that super duper important business stuff Dad was up to in Vietnam exploded and the time came to expand the desk adjacent to this colossal rectangle of comfort into a proper office. So the couch had to go. Lucky for me I was finally at a point in my life where I was ready to ditch the four paper walls of my tiny student flat into an apartment of my own. The day came where this monster of a couch was crammed into the back of yet again another truck with the contents of my childhood bedroom, the same vintage old coffee table and whatever else I managed to sneak in without my parents noticing. Off to the city we went.
"This is a great idea," I thought to myself " Free furniture to fit into my generously sized city dwelling. Until we got out of the truck to see the size of the stair well. Sure it was only a few steps, but it was narrow and didn't have much height to it. These stairs presented us a challenge, laughing back at us expecting us to fail.
I was determined to get this ridiculous thing into that apartment. So with all of our might and little patience for each other my Dad and I stood out in the harsh summer sun formulating a plan. Failure was not an option, this couch was going nowhere but that living room. So we wiped the sweat from our head and hands and picked up the full heaviness of wood and fabric combined together and practically threw it up those stairs. This was the true beginning of why I am writing about a freaking couch two years later.
It could be argued as a flaw in my nature that I find sentimental value in most of my possessions, or maybe I'm just a hoarder but to me, nothing is ever as simple as just what it is. This couch that started out as an impulse buy has hosted and embedded in itself many of my fondest memories. And I'm almost certain many of the people in my life would agree with that statement without a blink of an eye. This is the couch people fight each other to sleep on at the end of a party. This is the couch that, in my group of friends, is renowned for being the most comfortable piece of furniture, the couch that nobody will ever let me leave behind.
Together with the people that matter most to me, we have many stories to be told from here. Stories of how we drank ourselves so silly we threw birthday cake at the window, how we danced recklessly to Fall Out Boy, to the conversations lasting hours. To how we planned spontaneous train trips leading to nowhere and disaster at the same time. How we cried and yelled and fell out of love on this couch. The times where we would sit cramming for our final exams, the times where we would hear the greatest sentences in the world and the not so great. The times we would laugh so hard we would cry and snort. All of the morning coffees and movie times and binge watching stupid Youtube videos together. The times where we would be able to sit with each other and be unapologetically ourselves. Double chins with smudged eyeliner and all. There are so many moments in life I cherish and take with my every day, all from the foundation of this stupidly ridiculously heavy couch.
It has been ten months since I left for London and shy of four months since I have been back, and I am so happy to say that here I sit, writing a stupid story about a stupid couch, in my new stupidly small apartment where it just fits between the walls. You'll just have to be the right person reading this to realise that this story isn't so stupid.
Always,
e.m
N.B
Enjoy this completely irrelevant photo because I cant find my camera to take a photo of the actual thing we just talked about.
It was a regular Saturday in the Autumn of 2008, it was my father's first weekend off surrounding the few months he had been running around Vietnam doing super important business things. It was time for a bit of home improvement. No more than ten words caught his eye; the advertisement that started it all. "House sale due to relocation. Everything to go."
We expected him to come home with a few things, maybe a television stand, maybe a dining table or a few measly appliances at most. But nothing like this. I remember I was sat with my mother on this late 1980's or early 90's styled sofa with pink floral prints and tall arm rests with little scratched buttons following the indentation of the inside structure. The same sofa that is in all of my baby photos. We sat in the front room when our two dogs start barking and yelping and jumping about in pure excitement as they do whenever anybody comes to visit. Except this time around it was not a visitor, nor was it the same car my father left with that morning yet a completely unfamiliar vehicle.
"Oh for fucks sake!!" My mother says as she slides upright in her seat and bangs the television remote onto the vintage wooden framed glass coffee table in front of us. My eyes jolt from where Dr. Phil was counselling another dysfunctional family, to this big white moving truck rolling down into the outside of the back doors.
My Mum's guess was right, it was my Father driving. He parks this truck and swings himself out of the seat taller than my head, walks around and greets Mum with the same goofy face he has when he's ridiculously proud of himself. The heavy white doors swing open with a bang to reveal what the fuck he had just done. Anything could have been in there, but today, this Saturday in Autumn 2008 we were presented with this ridiculous second hand ten foot dark grey couch. It really wasn't all that pretty, and definitely something we did not expect to fit into Dad's interior design style.
Little did we know then, but this $80 impulse buy would be the start of something bigger than what it already was. This is where years of memories would exist, where we would lounge under the aircon in what always feels like Australia's hottest summer yet, where we would go for only the best blissful naps, where our big black Labrador would soon fall just as in love with it as we were and inevitably take over and claim it for his own.
But as life goes all that super duper important business stuff Dad was up to in Vietnam exploded and the time came to expand the desk adjacent to this colossal rectangle of comfort into a proper office. So the couch had to go. Lucky for me I was finally at a point in my life where I was ready to ditch the four paper walls of my tiny student flat into an apartment of my own. The day came where this monster of a couch was crammed into the back of yet again another truck with the contents of my childhood bedroom, the same vintage old coffee table and whatever else I managed to sneak in without my parents noticing. Off to the city we went.
"This is a great idea," I thought to myself " Free furniture to fit into my generously sized city dwelling. Until we got out of the truck to see the size of the stair well. Sure it was only a few steps, but it was narrow and didn't have much height to it. These stairs presented us a challenge, laughing back at us expecting us to fail.
I was determined to get this ridiculous thing into that apartment. So with all of our might and little patience for each other my Dad and I stood out in the harsh summer sun formulating a plan. Failure was not an option, this couch was going nowhere but that living room. So we wiped the sweat from our head and hands and picked up the full heaviness of wood and fabric combined together and practically threw it up those stairs. This was the true beginning of why I am writing about a freaking couch two years later.
It could be argued as a flaw in my nature that I find sentimental value in most of my possessions, or maybe I'm just a hoarder but to me, nothing is ever as simple as just what it is. This couch that started out as an impulse buy has hosted and embedded in itself many of my fondest memories. And I'm almost certain many of the people in my life would agree with that statement without a blink of an eye. This is the couch people fight each other to sleep on at the end of a party. This is the couch that, in my group of friends, is renowned for being the most comfortable piece of furniture, the couch that nobody will ever let me leave behind.
Together with the people that matter most to me, we have many stories to be told from here. Stories of how we drank ourselves so silly we threw birthday cake at the window, how we danced recklessly to Fall Out Boy, to the conversations lasting hours. To how we planned spontaneous train trips leading to nowhere and disaster at the same time. How we cried and yelled and fell out of love on this couch. The times where we would sit cramming for our final exams, the times where we would hear the greatest sentences in the world and the not so great. The times we would laugh so hard we would cry and snort. All of the morning coffees and movie times and binge watching stupid Youtube videos together. The times where we would be able to sit with each other and be unapologetically ourselves. Double chins with smudged eyeliner and all. There are so many moments in life I cherish and take with my every day, all from the foundation of this stupidly ridiculously heavy couch.
It has been ten months since I left for London and shy of four months since I have been back, and I am so happy to say that here I sit, writing a stupid story about a stupid couch, in my new stupidly small apartment where it just fits between the walls. You'll just have to be the right person reading this to realise that this story isn't so stupid.
Always,
e.m
N.B
Enjoy this completely irrelevant photo because I cant find my camera to take a photo of the actual thing we just talked about.
