Outdoor furniture
I saw a couch sitting out on a grassy median strip that separates the lanes of a divided parkway not too far from my office. The couch was blue, not powder blue but a deep, almost royal blue. Indeed, I would say that this couch was reasonably attractive and in exceptional condition for highway castoff furniture. Normally, highway castoff furniture is of the sickly, over-stuffed, shredded, oddly shaped, frou-frou, legacy from a bad fashion era variety – the kind of furniture that catches your eye upside down in a storm culvert and makes you think, “yeah, I can see why you would want to be rid of that!” The other thought that comes to my mind in these instances is that I am not surprised that a person who would throw a couch, chair or an ottoman onto the street would have such hideous furniture. Ugly is what ugly sits on. But as I’ve already said, this couch was not unattractive – far from it. I wondered if it accidentally fell off the moving truck and somehow ended up in the median strip. Perhaps the owners hadn’t even noticed that it was gone yet. Or maybe they were already retracing their route trying to find it.
The more I thought about it, though (I was sitting at a traffic light so I had plenty of time to do some highway castoff furniture forensics), the more it seemed to me that the existence of this couch on the median strip was no accident. First of all, it was in its normal upright position. The forces of castoff furniture physics frown upon such an outcome. And it was on a flat, level section of the median strip – in the exact middle, a spot too far from the road to be arrived at by the chance tumble out of the backend of a truck or from two guys giving it the old heave-ho in the dark of night. No, this couch was hand-carried to this place. But why?
It was late in the day on the day after Thanksgiving when I happened upon the blue couch. The sun was setting into the trees that lined the west side of the parkway to my right. The leaves were off the trees and the sun’s rays filtered haphazardly through the trunks onto the road and beyond to the median strip. It occurred to me then that the couch was perfectly positioned to view the sunset. The temperature was unseasonably warm for this time of year and the stiff breeze was blowing a steady supply of brightly colored leaves everywhere. For a brief moment I thought about pulling the car over and wandering out to the couch, sitting down on its cushions and taking in the scene. This oddly sentimental, post-Thanksgiving, amusing suburban scene.
10:53:43 AM  Stories
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