Supafly’s Couch

I mentioned on Monday that I’m in search of some sort of chair for Emma’s room to replace the glider, so that we can move the glider into the baby room. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that instead of a chair, it might be really nice to have some sort of mini-couch or settee. (Although the word “settee” makes it sound much fancier than what I actually have in mind.)

I don’t want to spend a ton, since it’ll be going in a kid’s room and probably only used for 3-4 years at most. As I pondered this, I suddenly realized that what I really want is something I had 15 years ago…and this story is too random to not write down for posterity.

In June 1999 at the end of my third year at Georgia Tech, I got a free couch. It was this awful, AWFUL yellow crushed velvet thing — super squishy cushions long past their prime, no arms, just wide enough for two people. We called it the “Supafly couch” because that was the nickname of the guy who had it before me. He was leaving Tech for the next several months to go be on MTV’s The Real World and needed to, in his words, “simplify.”

(I am not making this up.)

My friend’s parents were kind enough to keep that hideous thing in their basement over the summer, and I crammed it into the dorm room I shared with Courtney the following fall. The next year, I moved it into the living room of the apartment-style dorm I shared with Karen, Becca and Heather.

Side note to mention that this photo of Courtney and me from fall 1999 is the only one I could find with a glimpse of the couch that also wasn’t potentially embarrassing to post 15 years later. Every other photo featured someone asleep, someone stuffing their face with donuts, someone(s) wrestling, or someone’s (thankfully clothed) butt.

Oh, college.

Anyway, in May 2001 as I was moving out after graduation, my parents helped me carry the Supafly couch outside, where we left it by the dumpster next to the dorm. By the time we got back upstairs, we looked out the window and saw someone already lifting it into the back of a pickup. The couch still lived on!

I hadn’t thought about that totally awful, totally AWESOME couch in years, but it is making me smile today. I have so many memories associated with those last two years of college, many of which occurred in my dorm rooms and on or around that couch. It’s somehow fitting to realize that today I want something exactly that size and shape — although maybe not super squishy, and definitely not hideously yellow — to make more memories on, this time with Emma and her sister.

(So far, this or this look promising, but we’ll see.)