The couch of Joe and Melissa Zimmerman arrived on a Tuesday morning. For Joe and Melissa, newly married, that Tuesday holds little significance. For the couch, it was the beginning of its new life.

While the couch sat amongst its neighbors in the Pottery Barn warehouse in White Falls, Indiana, its only wish was to be purchased by a nice caring family. Its neighboring couches had lofty dreams of being shipped to far away cities mentioned by the Pottery Barn workers (Las Vegas and Manhattan had the most exotic names according the couches, and thus were most desired). The couch of Joe and Melissa Zimmerman was a very practical, down to earth couch however. It knew what its job as a piece of furniture was—be comfortable and useful. It knew its place, it wasn’t an ataman (considered the most frivolous piece of furniture by the group of Pottery Barn couches).

The couch was a pale yellow—“Pale goldenrod” if you asked the manufacturer. It could fit four people comfortably, and was soft and cushy. Joe and Melissa had been given a $1200 gift card to Pottery Barn as a wedding gift, and fell in love with the couch. They waited two weeks for to arrive. Little did they know that the couch waited just as expectantly.

The couch was put right in the middle of Joe and Melissa’s rather small town house. Every day after dinner, Joe and Melissa would snuggle under a ratty throw and watch TV. The couch particularly liked Tuesdays and Wednesdays, because those were the days American Idol was on. The couch had an uncanny knack for predicting which of the Idols would be voted off each week.

The couch fell into an easy rhythm, and the days blurred by. From what the couch could glean from Joe and Melissa’s conversations, Joe worked for an advertising company and Melissa taught school to third graders. Melissa arrived home each day at or around 3:35. She would then pour a glass of milk and make a small PB