fools or heroes?

Women, to measure the will of a man, test him with furniture (preferably the kind you don’t care about). I’ll explain.

Last night was an epic adventure. In order to make room for new living room furniture a friend is letting us borrow, we were met with the challenge of fitting an old 93-inch L-couch through a very narrow staircase into the basement. We had struggled to get the baby green monster down the staircase 18 months ago, and she is two feet shorter.

First, Barry and I tried the standard way. Failure. Then we flipped it. Nope. Then we went outside. Hope. Then we got it stuck worse. Anger. Then we got it unstuck. Jubilation. Then we unscrewed the screen door and threw it to the ground in haste. Take that. Then we redefined what stuck means. _____.

So we yelled for Tingley, third-party assistance, back-up. Help.

Tingley wisely pointed out how foolish we were for even trying. But then he evaluated the situation and caught our vision: this would be a conquest. Sitting on the couch in the basement would be like a pile of stones in the middle of a river.

We had already gone too far.

There was no turning back.

It was too much fun.

Lots of laughter.

It looked like this.

After sending Barry, our resident brute, to the back for maximized pushing power, we nearly busted the couch in two, which would’ve been jive, because we would’ve gotten it into the basement. This isn’t about comfort, or preserving the dry wall.

Those are temporary things. This is about something greater.

One of the hind couch legs was caught on the outside siding. Like a surgeon, Tingley cut off the fabric to reveal our nemesis, a tangled mess of wood and glue. He hit it with a hammer. “We need a saw,” Tingley said. Brilliant. Barry opened the battery-powered circular saw he received for Christmas and started blazing. The battery died. Tingley charged it. Brilliant.

Barry sawed away.

Then hit it with a hammer. Victory.

After a short celebration of the fall of the hind leg, we pushed. And we won.

Most wouldn’t have attempted to fit the couch in the basement. However, most wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice a leg and pieces of drywall for the task.

It reminded me of the Giants Super Bowl victory over the undefeated Patriots: on the final drive, Eli somehow gets away from the clutches of the Pats, lofts a prayer in the form of a football, and David Tyree somehow catches it in tight coverage, leverages it against his head while crashing to the earth.

Well, maybe not that intense.

Fools or heroes? The line is blurry. But it was epic in our world.