I own a trunk.
I bought the trunk, a humpbacked one, at the recent Wooster Rotary Auction.
Its blue.
Its a hard-to-describe shade of blue, but it matches an area rug in our living room, in nearly the same shade of hard-to-describe blue.
When I saw it tucked back in the bowels of the Wooster High School Performing Arts Center, I said to myself, Im gonna buy that trunk. Its blue.
And there it is.
I should mention that I got a pretty decent price on it, probably because theres not much of a market for blue humpback trunks.
After my winning bid, I spent several more hours at the auction with the Nipper (who is transfixed by a good bidding war), during which time I mentally scrambled and unscrambled the living room. How best to fit in the new acquisition? I could put it in that cornerwait, it will be hidden by the couch. Maybe over there. No, there is a table there.
The table could go. But you cant put a lamp on a humpback trunk.
Drat.
So, for now, the trunk is in our garage. Husband has no idea what a find it was. What he does know is there is no room in the living room, in its current incarnation, for a trunk, especially one that has no real purpose.
Husband comes from a long line of people (and by people, I mean men) who believe everything in a house needs to have a purpose. Chairs are for sitting, tables are for resting your feet, laundry baskets are the place next to which we throw our dirty clothes.
And on and on.
While hes not said as much, my sense is that Husband has no idea what a treasure my new-to-me blue trunk is. Its blue, for heavens sake, in the same weird way that our area rug is blue. Im talking here about the blue area rug that necessitated the purchase of navy blue curtains for the living room window.
Its not that I find blue soothing. What I do find is that matching colors are soothing. To have a greenish-blue thing in a room with a purplish-blue thing is the stuff that keeps me awake at night (that, and rearranging furniture in my head). Two-thirds of our household believes furniture should be about comfort. The other third, being me, believes the couch is lovely because there are little teeny-weeny flowers in the upholstery that are the same shade of blue thats got me obsessing at all hours.
I know Husband wants me to find a place in the room for my trunk. The best location, he believes, is in a spot that will not require him phoning a friend to come move furniture around from room to room so I can make space for the blue trunk.
We have some heavy stuffa china cabinet from my great aunts house that simply will not move, a beautiful chair in an amazing shade of burgundy (that complements the blue) and, of course, the pump organ that seemed like a really good idea when I bought it five years ago.
Nipper is amused by the trunk, which shocks his 14-year-olds sensibilities. After all, we already have luggage and this thing has no wheels and will never fit into the overhead compartment.
So why is it necessary for me to own a blue humpback trunk? Because it makes me happy.
Sometimes, in a world full of strife and unhappiness, you need a little something that has no purpose other than to make you smile when you see it. I dont require expensive jewelry or exotic vacations or even a brand-new car.
So, for the foreseeable future, Im going to sit on the couch and marvel at the just-the-right-weird-shade-of-blue trunk while my menfolk shake their heads and return to the land of mismatched, comfortable furniture in the basement man cave. They may watch sports or Ax Men or Fox News and not notice the clothes pile next to the bathroom laundry basket. That makes them happy; Ive learned not to question.
But they know that upstairs, the female minority of the house is happy in a place where blues match and all is well in her world.
And that, my friends, is the way we keep the peace in our little corner of paradise.
