Fiction — Humor

Couch Potato

Furniture that kills

Lurlene and Norton had been married for nine years when they bought their new couch. It was dark blue and overstuffed. It was so comfortable that it was difficult to get up from after sitting on it.

Norton immediately claimed the left side of the couch as his. He told their five children that no one was allowed to sit in his spot. In bed with his wife he also slept on the left side.

The children were aged nine, eight, seven, six, and three. (The three-year-old was an accident.)

The TV remote was to always be located on the end table by the left side of the couch. If the remote ever ended up elsewhere court proceedings were held to determine the guilty party who moved it. Punishment usually came in the form of denial of some snack.

When Norton came home from work he immediately switched into sweatpants and a t-shirt then plopped himself onto his spot on the couch where he stayed until it was time for bed — getting up only to utilize the bathroom.

“One of these days someone’s gonna invent something so that ya don’t gotta get up from the couch to pee,” he told Lurlene hundreds of times.

Once seated Norton immediately turned on the TV then he called out to Lurlene to bring him a beer and a snack. He then yelled at the kids to shut up so that he could hear the TV.

At dinnertime Lurlene served Norton his dinner on a tray so that he could eat it without getting up from the couch. She ate her dinner from a tray seated next to her husband. The kids ate their dinner on the floor like animals. The dining room table had not been used in years.

With each passing year Norton got fatter and fatter and fatter. Eventually he weighed over three hundred pounds. Not surprisingly, his health quickly began deteriorating. Not only did he never get any sunshine — which, as everyone knows, is crucially important to the health of a human body — but the only exercise he ever got was when he got up from the couch to go pee.

After lunch, with her household chores done and the house to herself, Lurlene would look at the couch that changed their lives. It was still mostly dark blue except for where Norton sat. There it was more black than dark blue. And it was a bit lower than the rest of the couch, the cushion there having been flattened from years of being under Norton’s ass.

Lurlene then went for a walk around the neighborhood luxuriating in the sunshine, birdsong, and the chattering of squirrels. It would not be long before the children came home from school and then Norton came home from work.

Eventually Norton suffered a massive heart attack while sitting on the couch. He was dead before the ambulance arrived.

Speaking with the funeral director, Lurlene learned that she would have to shell out big bucks for a special extra-large coffin, “Forget that. I’ve got a better idea,” she said.

The man operating the backhoe dug an extra large grave. Several men then lowered the family couch into the grave. They then lowered Norton’s body, which was in a body bag, onto the couch. Then Lurlene opened the first of two twenty pound bags of potatoes. She then dropped the potatoes down onto the couch and Norton’s body.

She then looked at the backhoe operator and gave him a thumbs-up, “Okay, fill it in.”

The headstone read, “Norton Schlumsky. A man who lived and died on a couch.”

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. White Feather Archive Index

Here is a better way to eat…