February 18, 2015 Article

The Old Coot shoots off his big mouth again.

By Merlin Lessler

This is one of those, Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus things. Whenever I venture into this arena I come out with scars, the verbal, in your face kind and the angry e-mail kind. Yet, here I go again. This time, it’s pillows. Decorative pillows to be precise. A design team works for months coming up with an attractive and ergonomically correct living room sofa. Three cushions to sit on, three cushions to lean back on. The ideal size, fit and color. A work of art. It makes it to the furniture store and the interior decorator takes one look, and says, “This needs some spicing up!” Then, proceeds to load on an array of throw pillows that accent, yet compliment the sofa fabric. It comes to your house the same way; the pillows cost as much as the sofa.

Old coots like me (and young guys too) take one look and say, “Where are you going to put the pillows so we can sit on it?” That’s where the Venus-Mars thing comes into play. We are told the pillows are going to stay right where they are. Duh! (The duh is implied, but the eye roll that accompanies it isn’t.) Every time we sit down we must move aside the decorator pillows. That’s when we discover the sofa is not long enough to stretch out on and take a nap. I swear our wives give the salesperson our height measurement before we’re led to one of the sofa display areas. All sofas in the section we are directed to are six inches shorter than we are. No naps on these sofas! And, when we get up, the pillows we tossed aside have to be put back. (Though hard as we try, we never do it correctly.)

It’s not just sofas that are loaded up with “unnecessary” pillows. Beds are too. It’s bad enough that you are required to sleep with something called a duvet, your bed is also home to an array of non-functional pillows. They have to be removed before you rest your head on a functional pillow. It’s kind of like the situation you encounter in the bathroom with the array of decorative soaps you’re not allowed to touch. They’re for guests! (Who never use them anyway.)

Decorative pillows breed after they’ve been in a house for a while. Their offspring plop down on chairs, the ones in the living room and then those in the kitchen and dining room; they get tied down and can’t easily be removed. Chairs, by the way, that were designed for comfort without the need of a pillow. I dread the day when the pillows invade our man caves and the other shrinking niches in our homes where we still retain some control. The pillows will win in the end. Venus always beats Mars!