Previously on Home Decorating for Rank Amateurs: The subject (“you”) has succeeded in the almost impossible task of ordering a slipcover online. This is what happens after it arrives.
The day finally arrives. The UPS driver rings your doorbell and hands you a large box. Endorphins squirt around your brain and your hands tremble with anticipation as you try to open the box with bare hands. This proves impossible, because it is taped with that stringy packing tape that no human hand can break. You look around for a pair of scissors or a box cutter.
You find the box cutter the hard way, while rummaging around in the catch-all drawer in the kitchen.
You scream and yell freak* and other expressive words. You dash like a cheetah to the bathroom where you run the wound under cold water, watching the blood swirl around the drain like the shower scene in Psycho. You pour half a bottle of rubbing alcohol on the wound. You look for a Band-Aid that is big enough, and when you find one you try to open it with one hand. This isn’t easy, as anyone knows who has ever tried it. Eventually, you succeed. You run your hand under the cold water once more and slap the Band-Aid over it before it starts to bleed again. You clean the blood off the sink with a piece of toilet paper.
You go back to the kitchen and pick the offending box cutter out of the drawer. You go over to where you left the box and, with three swift motions, slash that freaking** tape until it gives up and allows the top of the box to open.
You close the box cutter, which the moron who had used it before had obviously neglected to do. You wonder if that moron was you. You throw it back into the catch-all drawer and slam the drawer shut, narrowly missing catching a finger in it.
You remove your cat from the now-open box, where she has made herself comfortable on top of the packing material.
You dig into the box and remove a large lump covered with cheap plastic. The cheap plastic comes apart easily and you peel it off. The plastic sticks to your hand as you attempt to stuff it into a nearby trash receptacle. The cat digs the plastic half out of the receptacle. You stuff it back in (the plastic, not the cat), as deep as it will go. The cat sits on the floor and gives you a dirty look.
You unfold the precious slipcover, drape it on a chair and look at it.
The color looks nothing like what you saw on your computer screen. It is a light green, but not the beautiful winter mint green you thought it would be. This color is more like the stuff you were coughing up the last time you had bronchitis. You are going to have to cover it with sofa pillows, shawls and anything else that will draw attention away from the sick color. In addition to being butt ugly, the thing smells like some weird chemical from another universe and it is full of wrinkles that only an industrial pressing could remove. Even the cat doesn’t like the thing. She sniffs at it, makes a sour face, sneezes and walks away.
Maybe, you think, the wrinkles will stretch out when you put the cover on the chair.
Note: Everyone else in the house has managed to be out and you have not succeeded in bribing any of your friends to help, except for one person, who is just as clueless as you are and twice as awkward, forcing you to invent a reason to decline the offer. You have already figured out what you will say the next time you see any of the deadbeats, to make them feel guilty for the rest of their pitiful lives.
You pick up the offensive object, open it out and put it over the piece of furniture.
You have it on backwards.
You pull and push and turn it around. You start to tuck it in, to make it look like the picture on the website. That’s when you discover that you have been tucking it in on the wrong arm. You pull it out, straighten it until you think it’s right, and start tucking it in again.
The cat is sitting at a distance and staring at you, thinking that you are a hopeless idiot.
That’s when you discover that the wrinkles are NOT going to stretch out because the piece is too big.*** Remember how hard you worked, measuring the piece of furniture and guessing which size to buy? It is all in vain.
You almost pull the piece of furniture apart while you jam the cover into every crevice, as far as it will go. It billows and hangs all over the place, but at least it doesn’t hang onto the floor, except in back, where it doesn’t show. You fold some of the billows until you get the cover to look reasonably neat, except for the still-wrinkly ruffles on the bottom. You make a mental note to move the ottoman and put it in front of those ruffles, to hide them.
You are now exhausted, and you sit down and relax, on top of your new slipcover.
You get up an hour later and see that the cover has become disarranged. You spend ten minutes rearranging it to look reasonable again.
You wonder if the guys in the furniture store up the street know any professional upholsterers.
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*I’m sure you know that the word that comes out is not “freak.”
**Likewise.
***You’re probably wondering how I know all this. Don’t ask.
My endorphins groove to the beat of Curtis Mayfield and there’s no stopping them. They cut up the slipcover and made flags of countries that I don’t even think are real. I know. If I’ve learned anything from you, it’s that slipcovers do not work. Thank you so much.
If I can save you the misery of an ill-fitting furniture cover, my work will not have been in vain and my life will have been worthwhile. 😉
I suspect that you thought you knew all about slip covers until they actually arrived. You have cured me of ever wanting to take this route. I’ll live with my furniture until one of us dies!
LOL! The inspiration for these last two posts came from experiences that I had in the past with furniture covers bought online. Of course, as a writer of humor, I am allowed to exaggerate, embellish, merge, make up tall tales and tell flat lies. Like you, though, I have been cured of buying pre-made slipcovers.
That picture on the bottom of the post is my apartment. You see that chair way in the background? When I made a recent decision to cover the cat scratches on it, I again went online, but I bought a very large, heavy cotton blanket. It looks very good and works very well. It’s also washable. Winner!
Funny and impressive: Not everyone can write humor with a 2nd-person point of view.
We are always hearing, “Write what you know,” so I did. It was then necessary to disguise the narrative, so as not to have to admit that I am an awkward moron. So I put it in 2nd person, in order to include the entire population of the First World, and exaggerated the story until it only bore a minimal resemblance to actual events.
I’m a writer. I can do that. 😉