100 Things About Me # 43 A

I glanced at my 100 things list yesterday, and it occurred to me that some of them maybe require a little more explanation than a list would allow. So (partially on a cue from Liberal Banana), I’ve decided to explain some of them further. In no particular order. But the one I’ve picked today is I think the funniest story of them all. And it gives a little more insight into my Redneck upbringing.

There was a pretty nasty flood here in 1997. Bad enough that we made national news (though not quite as bad as what’s going on by Jessica), and the worst of it hit our downtown. Which meant that a lot of the businesses had water in their basements. Which also meant that there was a whole bunch of furniture that ended up getting thrown away.

One night, a friend and I were taking our dogs on a walk when we spotted something purple in one of the big dumpsters downtown. We wondered what it was, and I decided to climb up the side to get a better look. Lo and behold it was a couch! Not just any couch, but a purple vinyl couch! It looked like it was in pretty good shape. And we joked about coming back and pulling it out to be used somewhere.

But as we continued on our walk, we became more serious about getting the couch. We started hatching a plan and rounded up a couple more of our friends (we tried to get it with just the two of us, but it was way too heavy). After one of them got off work, she came out to the car with her hoodie pulled over her head & singing the Mission Impossible theme. We drove back to the dumpster (this is about 9:30 at night now), and MI girl and I jumped in the dumpster to hand the couch back out to the other two chickens. . .err. . .friends.

It was insanely heavy! But we finally pushed it out of the dumpster. “Now what?”

“It’ll fit in my trunk.” So sayeth friend #1. We all laughed. Because even though it was a Buick LeSabre, it was NOT going to fit a six foot couch into the trunk. But she was insistent. So we tried it. Forwards and backwards and leftways and rightways it would. Not. Fit.

“Now what?” I asked again, after catching my breath from laughing so hard.

“We’ll put it on top of the car.” Friend #1 reasoned.

So we hiked this insanely heavy couch up over our heads and onto the top of the car. Which happened to be her mom’s. And I’m sure we put more than a few scratches on the roof. We didn’t have any rope or anything to tie it down, so we ended up all sticking one hand out the window to hold onto the dumb thing. By this time it was close to 10:00, and it was in the spring time, which meant that it still was really cold at night. And our hands would have been cold enough just holding onto the thing for the four blocks back to my house. But Friend #1 (she is my best friend and is freaking hilarious) decided that we needed to take back alleys and side streets. And drive on the side streets at about 50 MPH. My hands felt like they were going to fall off. I say hands because it was so cold I had to keep alternating which one was out the window.

We finally made it to my house and decided to put the couch in my parents’ garage. So we got it off the car and set it up. It was a perfectly good couch. It wasn’t wet or moldy or anything gross, so we couldn’t understand why they had thrown it away.

Until I sat on it and fell backwards. The back was cracked right along the line with the seat. Free recliner! We all laughed, but it stayed in the garage for quite sometime.

Tune in next week for the story of sneaking the purple couch into my school!