A Man and His Couch: A Love Story With Crumbs

Ahh ‌… a man and his couch.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he realizes the most stable relationship he has isn’t with a person—it’s with his couch.

The couch never asks a man how his day was, but somehow understands. It doesn’t judge his ripped sweatpants. Or his socks that smell like a dirty World War II undershirt.  The couch wholeheartedly accepts a man as he is.

When a man first meets his couch, it’s casual. He sits down.  He gets up.  No commitments. No labels.

Then one day a man realizes that the couch gets him.

And so begins the bond.

It knows how to preserve the beginning formation of a man’s ass groove.  How to support his head on its’ arm for the almighty nap.  How to cradle his back sore from bending to reach for a beer in the fridge.  Other people can sit there, sure—but it’s never the same. They don’t fit correctly. And they don’t deserve to.

A man’s couch absorbs complaints about work, politics, and the remote being too complicated to figure out.  The couch never interrupts. Never gives unwanted opinions or advice.  It just quietly sits there not complaining about the mounds of various chip crumbs between its’ cushions, the dog hair or the 2 year-old salsa stain.

When a man gets dirt on it, he tells himself that he’ll clean it later. Later never comes. The couch understands.

Eventually, a man starts defending his couch.

He won’t replace it because it has “plenty of life left.”  He’s blind to the worn upholstery.  He’s deaf to the squeaking springs.  He’s numb to the flattening cushions.

New couches look nice, but they don’t know a man.  They haven’t been through overtime games, Sunday afternoons, or that one phase when he watched re-runs of “The Honeymooners” for three weeks straight.

But, eventually, the day will come when a man realizes that it’s time to part ways.  He pats the couch and says to himself “We’ve had a great run”.  And like elephants, neither will ever forget.

By Rick Morgan, who just lost his couch.

<em>Rick writes about man stuff as he sees it. You can see more of his thoughts here: hamandtees.com</em>