Ads and Cowhides

by Dale Angel

The ads feature all kinds of stuff we need to enjoy life more. There are pictures of huge chairs and couches made of black or brown leather…a refined word for ‘cowhide’.

For a little extra money you can have a place built in the arms of couches or chairs for your beverage of choice. It relieves one of using their arms, and alleviates the few steps to the refrigerator.

The ads indicate you need a wide screen to go with those loungers of great comfort.

Is selling these objects a subtle way of cultivating an appetite for self-destruction?

I’ve noticed after one falls into these comfort zones they fail to recover for hours. These lifeless areas of life add five pounds. Monday mornings their pants shrink and the buttons won’t work.

After a few years of practicing riding these cow hides they can’t breathe going up a single flight of stairs. Fancy names like Lazy Boy should be a red flag.

If the screen breaks down during a really big sports event, anxiety and distress indicate withdrawal symptoms. Bigger pickups apparently soothe and meet that need. Maybe because they have lost an important part of the masculine anatomy.

A limp self-destructing life may be caused by a failure to believe in raking the leaves or painting the house, so you pay the gym for the privilege of pumping iron. That same physical activity can enlarge all aspects of the body by running behind the lawn mower or repair the roof or some other useful work. An added benefit is you can learn to breathe again, maybe even climb ladders.

One of my neighbors returned a lounger because the neck rest was not angled right. Now, necks are so soft one can lose his ability to hold up one’s head. Can back problems be healed if one crawls off the cow hide? I hope before the neck fails to do its job, there are special doctors on every corner for failed backs and necks.

I’m keeping in mind shopping on line is a form of self-destruction when you’ve sit so long ones feet have no feeling, a good indication of my own symptoms of chasing the ads while sitting on cow hides.

There were awesome bargains for personnel; she got first dibs and took home pick-up loads after she plundered the spoils. I was left with a bikini, size 2, entry level bras, and old women’s shoes, the kind you wouldn’t be caught dead in. The kind I wear today.

Beautiful instrumental music came through the intercom. She sighed and said “That is the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.” I grabbed my polished sword and plunged it between the third and fourth rib as my lips answered “Yes, it is. It was written by The Beatles.”

She told me to set up a display for vases. I said “There’s a mistake. It says the price is $12.98. I just bought one of these at the dollar store.” She appeared defensive, fatigued, weary, and said that I lacked ‘retail savvy’. I think that includes salable skills.

It got worse. They put me in fabrics. Me! I suffer from ‘textile dementia’.

When the soft rose paisley brushed against me, I buckled and took it home. Then there was the blue polyester silk I saw myself draped in it. I couldn’t pass up 16 yards for so small a sum, there was more, at the end of the week, I had to pay them to work there.

I couldn’t count past my fingers and toes, so when a customer asked for a yard and three-sixteenths…six inches of the yellow and a half yard of the green…add the quarters of five eighths to that…cut three and one fourth plus half inch pieces…add another quart of the blue…a cup of tea and a half gallon of the striped and one fourth of a teaspoon and a mile and a half and eight tenths of a pound two ounces plus five grams…

I had to excuse myself. I needed to scream.