When I moved into my place – now over two years ago – one half of my sectional sofa ended up in storage.  At the time, I was working full time, and my significant other was still in law school, so he took the brunt of the moving responsibilities.  He did a great job, with the exception of that one sofa end, which was simply too long to fit into the oddly contoured entrances, so it was sent to storage at my dad’s office.

Cut to two years later.  I’m now single, empowered, and have convinced myself that maybe, just maybe, the ex gave up on the sofa the way he gave up on the relationship.  Ok, that was overly dramatic…   and actually not true, at all…. but hey, breakups don’t really tend to make people think clearly, do they?

So, I mention my thoughts to my dad, and the two of us get all riled up, and convince each other that it is possible.  Picture the Rocky montage where he runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as part of his training regime.  THAT sort of pumped up.

The movers who arrived with my sofa the very next day were not as pumped up as we were.  For starters, I live in a third storey walk-up, and the sofa needed to be brought up the rickety, old, fire escape.  The men – one a strapping young Indonesian with a sunny disposition, and the second, who could best be described as Nikita Khrushchev, in terms of both looks and accent- were skeptical to begin with.

The older one, upon scoping the scene, exclaimed: “Dieux, c’est impossible!”  Translation:  “God, it’s impossible. “  The old man seemed to be invoking God a lot – Dieux this, Dieux that.  I thought he was just one of those people who mutters God a lot,  until the young one put out his hand to me and said: “J’m'appelle Dieux.”  Sorry, you’re called WHAT?  I’m sure his name is really great in Indonesia, but given that he now lives in a French province, he might want to change it to something other than God.  Just a suggestion.

So, the guys finally make it up the fire escape with the sofa, and it quickly becomes apparent that the sofa was in storage for a reason – it doesn’t fit through the doorway.  I wish I could say I admitted defeat and sent it back to storage.  But I’m too stubborn.  So I called my dad.  Let me just say the two of us have a way of getting each other worked up, so we might have been a little overly excited when we convinced each other it WAS possible – even if that meant removing a tiny piece of wall.

An hour, two exasperated movers, a whole the size of a car window in my wall, a pile of concrete on my floor and a back door off its hinges later, and the sofa still didn’t fit.

Today, I sit writing this blog post as Sam the carpenter hammers away in the other room, repairing the damage I made to my apartment, and intermittently chuckling under his breath.  The sofa, as you’ve probably guessed, is back in storage.  My sister and her fiancé are looking for a place, so maybe they’ll be able to use it.  Let’s just hope they’re smart enough to use a measuring tape before they take a hammer to their wall.

Lesson learned.