Marital Discord

In the (old version) of the Manchurian Candidate, Raymond Shaw says to his new bride, "There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off." I'm pretty sure he goes on to say that usually they end up marrying each other.

Shaw's observation is definitely true in our house. Eddie will wake up, turn on the tv in our room, leave the room, turn on the tv in the family room and then leave for work with both tvs blaring. His whole family does it-- I'll visit their house and hear weird sounds coming from the basement (where people rarely go), sneak down the stairs expecting to be confronted by a ghost or an intruder, and find the tv on. I turn tvs and lights off obsessively-- too many years of listening to my dad grumble over the electric bill, I guess.

But in our years of marriage, we've found a dividing line that's potentially more divisive than the tv on/off dilemma. Pillows.

I'll admit it, I have a small-scale obsession with throw pillows. In our family room we currently have twelve throw pillows (six on the couch, four on the loveseat, one on each of the wicker ottomans). Our living room couch and chair have five throw pillows between them. Our bed (his biggest bone of contention) has eight pillows (two standard-size, two king-size, two navy throw pillows, an embroidered throw pillow and a big-ass body pillow to support the whole thing). I have Halloween throw pillows and Christmas throw pillows and have recently been planning what kinds of decorative pillows I want to add to Annie's new bed (a ballerina pillow and possibly one with silk ribbon embroidery).

And because I've already told you that I love them, I'm sure that you can guess the rest. Eddie detests the pillows. We each sleep with only one pillow, so he doesn't understand why we just don't have two on our bed (it doesn't look as pretty like that-- isn't it obvious?). Why do we need twelve pillows in the family room? (To add punches of color to the khaki couch and the khaki walls, of course.) He likes to sit on the couch and throw the pillows on the floor. I don't want them on the floor. So usually when we watch tv at night we end up with a huge pile of pillows on the corner of the couch, high and precarious, practically obscuring our view of the tv.

If I were a truly selfless person, I'd probably give up on the pillows, or at least not go on a hide-and-seek rampage when he hides them. But since he's more selfless than I am, he tolerates them, and only occasionally tosses them on the floor in protest.

--originally published 2/5/06