Some stuff I just don’t care about. I don’t mean to be an apathetic person, it’s just that there are some things I don’t have a strong opinion about, therefore I don’t concern myself with whatever it is. Oftentimes I’m so indifferent to an issue that I’d prefer not to even have a conversation about the subject matter because, well, I simply just don’t care.
The problem is, sometimes my wife cares. In fact, she cares a lot about some things. Things that I don’t care about, like who in our family is going to get pregnant next. This opposition can create a conflict at my house, and in my car, and especially at the furniture store. As an example, how the wood grain of a coffee table might highlight the browns of a floor tile would be something I just don’t care about. My wife, whom I love, she cares about that subject matter very deeply. And she wants to discuss it with me, extensively, for hours, sometimes days. Obviously, she is really concerned about the floor tile matching the furniture.
For the record, I only have one wife. She is it. Most things that happen in our lives we have to discuss, debate, and decide with each other. There is nobody else except the two kids and the dog, but we decided years ago that their opinion didn’t matter. That leaves the two of us to run the democracy of our household. We work together to make all of the major decisions like paper or plastic, pizza or hamburgers, Pepsi or Coke. So, when we purchased a new home (which cost me a lot of money but didn’t come with any free furniture) we suddenly needed to go and buy stuff. A lot of stuff I didn’t really care about and a lot of stuff that needs to match with that damn floor tile.
That meant that my wife needed to discuss the details of those furniture purchases with her partner. Unfortunately that partner of hers just didn’t care about floor tile or furniture (he only cared if the house came with a three car garage). Therefore the conversations about furnishings were quite one sided. “What do you think about this couch?”
“I don’t.”
“Don’t you like sitting on couches?”
“I do.”
“So what do you think about this one?”
“It’s a couch.”
“I know it’s a couch, I’m trying to get your opinion about it. I think it will match the floor tile. Do you like it?”
“As much as I can like a couch, I guess. I don’t hate it. I don’t care, Baby.”
“I need you to care, if we’re going to buy it.”
“If I say that I care, can we stop discussing it? Just buy it if you like it.”
“I can’t buy it if you don’t like it.”
I told my wife to buy whatever she wanted and furnish her new Barbie Dream House with whatever made her happy. Oddly, that immense freedom didn’t make her happy. She didn’t want free range to decorate however she wanted. What she was looking for was a partner in the project of picking out the décor and furniture for the house. I think she didn’t want the sole responsibility, or blame, if the furniture didn’t match the floor tile. Unfortunately I just didn’t possess enough passion for things like bar stools or end tables to satisfy her. She wanted to stand in furniture stores for hours and discuss the pros and cons of a self-storing leaf in a kitchen table. I wanted to kill myself.
Eventually I did find one thing about furniture stores that I did like: recliners. Every furniture store we went to had these super comfy recliners, dozens of them. I liked sitting in all of them and testing them out one by one. It turns out I never met a recliner I didn’t like. I would sit down, kick my feet out, and lean back in leathery goodness. It was heaven. I could feel myself start to fade into a nice nap, when suddenly my nap would be interrupted by a voice, a nagging voice, a voice that wanted something from me. “Do you like the gray-brown or the green-brown swatch for the living room couch?”
“Uh, gray-brown, definitely.”
“Oh, I think the green-brown because the green will help bring out the color in the bar stools and match the floor tile.”
“Then green-brown, yes, green-brown is the one.”
“But you said you liked the gray-brown first.”
“Honey, honestly I can’t even tell the difference. Just get what you want.”
“I want you to get out of that recliner and actually help me!”
“Why do I need to get up? I can see the blue-brown from right here.”
“It’s green-brown!”
I realized my wife was upset, so to bridge the divide I gave her this analogy.
“Baby, I know you’re annoyed with me when it comes to this furniture-floor-tile stuff. And I understand you’re excited about the new house and all of the furniture. But think of it this way. How excited have you ever been standing next to me at any car dealership? When I have asked you questions about a car I was looking to buy and I wanted your opinion on alloy wheels or the sport package, you gave me nothing. You just don’t care about that stuff. You want a car to get around town, but you don’t want to hang out at the dealership and talk about whether a car has 300 horsepower.
“This is the same situation with the roles reversed. I want furniture to park my butt in, but I just don’t care enough about it to talk about veneer versus hardwood and which one will match the floor tile the best. I love you, but if I have to discuss the hues of a color palette and the complimentary effects of blues in a wood stain, I may just have to cut my ears off.”
In the end, we bought a recliner. For the record, I don’t think it’s going to match the floor tile. Next stop, refrigerator!
Rob is currently sitting in a recliner asleep, right in the middle of a furniture store. You can read more from Rob Krider or contact him at robkrider.com.
This article appears in Nov 17-24, 2016.