Coffee tables

I have a scar on my left cheek from a brief tangle with a coffee table. I was young, maybe three, and the coffee table won the scuffle. It is not a big scar. If you didn’t know the story, you might assume I’d had a bad bit of acne that left its mark. But the coffee table did it. I tripped and fell face first into the corner of it when I was about 3 years old or so.  It is one of my few specific memories of pain.

Along the way, there have been broken bones, and dislocations, and surgeries, but the memories of those are vague recollections. Shadows of the real pain I felt at the time. The coffeetable incident seems is clearer in my mind…sharper in intensity. The dull ache in my cheek that continued for a couple of days, following the initial sharp pain, is memory that persists.

Once, in my first apartment by myself, I woke and stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee and then sit on the couch to watch the news, as I did every morning. I was a heavy smoker back then, and as I leaned over the coffee table to put out a cigarette, I realized the ashtray had been cleaned. Odd, I thought. Until I noticed the entire table had been cleaned. The magazines were neatly stacked and a jar of cigarettes filled, a clipboard with a fresh pad of paper and pens arranged and at the ready. And it had been wiped clean of all the stray ashes and dust. I was perplexed. A notion gnawed at the back of my brain but refused to surface, until I returned from the kitchen with a second cup of coffee and could now see the pile of cigarette butts on the rug in front of the coffee table. It all came flooding back to me. Sitting drunk on the couch the night before, I had finished my drink and stood up to go to bed, when I staggered and fell into the coffee table, knocking it on its side and emptying the ashtray onto the rug. “As good a time as any” I remember thinking, and grabbed the Windex and cleaned the table and replaced everything neatly. I remember thinking it was too late at night to get out the vacuum cleaner, so I left the butts for the morning.

I’ve quit smoking, and don’t drink myself into oblivion anymore. And I can’t run through the house like I did when I was three…

Over the course of my marriage, my wife sold 80% of my belongings. So when she divorced me and moved out, she took all but a couch, a tv, a microwave and two lamps. Over the next couple of years, I eagerly took whatever furniture and housewares people gave me. I bought a bed and my Dad bought Savannah a bed. My Aunt Helen gave me the dining room table and Tiffany-style lamp that hung over it… I remember eating at it with my cousins on holidays or sleepovers during the summer.

But I never ended up with a coffee table. My Dad advised against it. He remembers my fall face first into his coffee table, and now Savannah is running through my house. My clumsiness is an issue. And I spend all of my time at home barefoot, as does my child. We both stub our toes regularly.

So, a lowly ottoman has become the coffee table. We use it as a tiny table when we order pizza. And it is usually where the remotes to the TV and DVD player reside. My keys & wallet hang out there. So, it was no surprise when, Monday, I sauntered through the living room barefoot, and kicked the leg of the ottoman. This time, there was not a lot of a pain. But the sound it made was not good. I thought I’d cracked the wooden leg of the ottoman, when I saw blood. I had split the nail on my big toe right down the center. The crack only ran about a third of the way down the nail, but it is a nuisance. It catches on my sock, and the carpet and the bedsheets. It is a pain in the ass. And it has caused another problem.

Now, I want a real coffee table. No glass top, no sharp corners. And I want to pick it out. If my furniture is going to end up damaging me and leaving scars (on me and likely my kid) I figure I had better like the way it looks. When I pick one out, I’ll have you over…for coffee.

~ by travelingwithcharley on July 27, 2008.