Wife and Mommy

for Stimey...who thinks it's damn funny that I lost a table.

My first apartment was a cute little dump, but it was all mine! My sister helped me scrounge together enough furniture to make it livable–just the bare necessities. I had a bed, a dining table, a sofa and a TV.

As time passed and paychecks collected, I began to accumulate other household items. One of them was a small TV cart so that my teeny 13 inch Sony Trinitron didn’t have to sit on the floor.

Over time, I lived here and there–I moved eight times in seven years if I am counting correctly! Sometimes I had roommates who had nicer, better furniture. Sometimes I was on my own with what I had. Things got lost in moves, other things were discovered after finding boxes that hadn’t gotten opened at the last place of residence. Life was carefree and I didn’t have much attachment to my things.

So it was when I was sharing a townhome in Fairfax (residence #7, I think) that I remembered that TV cart. I wondered where it had gone. It had done well holding the TV (and eventually, the VCR). At various times, it had also served as an end table, a bookshelf, and a shoe rack. The 13 inch TV was still with me, but now sat on an entertainment center provided by my roommate.

I looked for the table throughout the townhouse but didn’t see it. I looked in the storage attic (I’d really moved up in the world–I had storage!). It was no where to be found.

Eventually I convinced myself that I must have given the table to a good friend of mine who had just gotten her own apartment. I vaguely recalled putting it the trunk of her beat-up Nissan the day I’d given her other household items to help get her started. But when I asked her later, she said I’d never given her a table.

Perplexed, I went about life thinking the table must have been sacrificed in one of my many moves. It wasn’t uncommon, after all, to lose things in moves. Still, a table is a lot harder to lose than, say, a pair of socks or a frying pan.

Imagine how astonished I was one morning when I went downstairs to fix some breakfast. I threw something in the microwave and…underneath the microwave was that TV table.

Um. Okay.

Yes. It was there the entire time.

No. I hadn’t seen it there (or at least I hadn’t noticed it) the several weeks I mulled over where I might have put the table.

Yes. I got teased mercilessly about this incident and still do to this day (ten years later).

No. I no longer have the table. I gave it away. Really I did!

Yes. It kind of is funny that I lost a table. I can laugh about it now.