You appeared, biblically, on my front lawn last week; a latter-day Moses-esque relic from the 70s drifting down the Nile of rainwater in the gullies of my street. I don't know if you accidentally fell off a truck bound for the Salvation Army store, or were maliciously cast-off, abandoned and scorned, by a neighbor of mine who no longer required your foot-resting services. I contemplated a course of action. While as a child we opened our home to an adorable kitten who'd had this same fate befall her, somehow I didn't feel that you, Puke Green Ottoman were going to seamlessly blend into the household to the same extent that the cat did, happily dozing and shedding on the guest room bed for the next ten years.
You were pretty generic, puke green ottoman - ripped and stained, the black, scratchy fabric ubiquitously underneath all pieces of furniture torn to shreds. At first I hoped you might just go back from wherever you came, your owner having experienced a change of heart; and in hopes of this, I left you untouched for a couple days, but sadly, you were not reclaimed. Trash day rolled around, and I thought perhaps the benevolent operators of the seemingly five trash trucks rumbling past our house at 6:45am might have disposed of you, perched so expectantly as you were on the curb, so clearly out of place on a front lawn. No luck there either.
Days passed, and you grew increasingly waterlogged, not only from the several hours of pelting rain we experienced on Sunday, but also from the daily drenching you received by our sprinkler system, one of the heads of which I'm pretty sure you were perched immediately on top of. As it purified your nether regions like some sort of some furniture-based douche, I was beside myself, Puke Green Ottoman, concerned that you would soon become a toadstool colony and attract klatches of roving lawn gnomes to dwell in your shadow.
I weighed the options. I thought of donating you to the local homeless hoarder who lives in the bus stop at the foot of the street, but given that he so frequently patrols the neighborhood with his overflowing shopping cart, I assumed he must have already decided against claiming you for his own needs. This to me was foolish on his part, as even as mildewed as you were, he could've at least used you to put his feet up in front of the bus bench. But when even the addled homeless person who occasionally walks around with his butt crack exposed doesn't want it, you know it's no good.
Dedicated followers of this blog will already be familiar with my across-the-street neighbors, the dumpy Orthodox Jews, many generations of which reside in the same 1313 Mockingbird Lane-esque dwelling, in addition to their giant van / rolling storage unit which resides in the street and is moved only once a week on street-sweeping day. After a weekend of listening to their screaming children and Yiddish hollered on the sidewalk in front of their house, not to mention an ever-growing number of close calls when backing out of the driveway (our reversing cars hidden to by their giant van parked at the curb), my patience with them has grown thin.
Monday night I was in a terrible mood. And as I drove up and spied you once more, Puke Green Ottoman, my frustration with you somehow aligned in my head with my frustration at my aggressively shabby neighbors. Somehow you were THEIR fault - I was sure of it. So I picked you up, walked you across the street, in all your waterlogged splendor, and dropped you on the Jews' front lawn, their giant van now conveniently shielding you from view.
While this thumb in the eye of my neighbors was obviously as Quixotic as it was terrible, I chose to look beyond that. As I also was able to justify it as a request for their assistance, indeed, a cry for help. "Please, help me dispose of this unwanted piece of furniture, kind neighbors!" As people who seem to have no other occupation other than actively trading in junk and crap, they seemed somehow better equipped than yours truly to deal with an errant stool... either the location of a local dumpster, the proper number to call to have it hauled away, or perhaps some extra space in the back of their van full of shit in which to place it. Or, I even thought, perhaps some pathological hoarding impetus might kick in with them and they'd take it to some great, holy Hebrew hassock mikvah and rehabilitate it to is once great splendor, giving it a place of honor in their living room right under the menorah so all the young Moishes and Shoshanahs could play on it. Inside. Quietly. And if not, at the very least, it was off my fucking lawn. For the time being.
"I've dealt with the ottoman situation," I told my roommate when I walked inside.
"What'd you do with it?" He asked.
"The less you know, the better."
Imagine my frustration the next night when I returned home, and, the ottoman was in fact back EXACTLY where it had been! Clearly the Jews had not seen my gesture as the polite request for assistance that I had intended it to be, but more as the slightly drunken, rage-fueled act that it had in actuality been.
"How the FUCK is the ottoman back?" My roommate asked when he got home.
"I'm dealing with it!" I shouted.
"I don't understand how this happened," he very legitimately said.
"It was the damn Jews," I responded through gritted teeth.
"Right. The Jews." He shook his head and walked away.
I'll deal with you later, Orthodox Jews... I'll figure out how to bust you and your giant van full of shit yet. Meanwhile, Puke Green Ottoman, our date with destiny continues to elude us.
I ruminated on my options. I though of just putting the ottoman into the middle of the street, rendering it the city of Los Angeles's problem. Or better yet, dousing it in lighter fluid, setting it on fire, then putting it in the middle of the street, and making an anonymous phone call to the police. "There's a flaming ottoman in the street, and the people who put it there had peyas!"
Another trash day rolled around, and I tried actually placing you, Puke Green Ottoman, on TOP of the trash barrels the night before, rendering you unmissable by the waste professionals. But when I walked into the living room this morning, there you were, still on the lawn, they had just knocked you off the top and left you on your side, a clear referendum that this Rasputin of a footrest wasn't trash, but was indeed, something more: it was my own, personal Golem - fiendish, otherworldly, doomed to haunt both me and my lawn forever more.
So I did what I had been avoiding doing, but what I should have done when you first appeared. I put on some rubber gloves, put you in the car, drove you to the closest dumpster I could find, and PITCHED you the FUCK in. I'm sure I violated all sorts of private property dumpster-dumping laws by doing this, however this particular dumpster happened to be behind a local American Apparel, so I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising, be-headbanded 87 lb. hipster employee stumbles on it and decides to haul it inside and use it to display their spring Casio watch collection, or a series of coffee table books about mullets. Ironically. Regardless, I hope that if they do have security cameras out back that captured footage of me ditching the ottoman, both my face and license plate number highly visible, the very apathy they feign when you ask them a question while shopping in their store will prevent them from making the effort to take any legal action.
It's been a wild ride, Puke Green Ottoman. We have traveled an epic, indeed, biblical, path together - but now I can only hope our journey has drawn to a close. I hope to never meet the chair or any part of the living room set from which you sprung. I won't be held responsible for my actions if I do.
Best Regards,
Dear Crabby
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