When my sister and I were really little, my parents had a brown corduroy sleeper sofa in the TV room where we spent as much of our free time as we were allowed. This is the room wherein I watched Soul Train and Saturday Night Live, that movie Chariots of Fire, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Battle of the Planets, and other staples of 70’s childhood. My sister tried to watch things she liked too, and to hear me tell it, I let her.
Who even knows how many months of our life we spent on this brown couch? Through health, sickness, Saturday morning cartoons, sleepovers. For years. Fashions came and went. Peanut butter with jelly became peanut butter with honey. We switched to 2% milk, and carob replaced chocolate.
But for as much that changed, one thing never did: Megan and I both devotedly picked our noses and mindlessly wiped our boogers on the back of the couch for all those years. I remember my dad’s face when, during our 1983 move to a bigger house, he discovered our booger wall on the back of that couch. Boy was he mad. He was so mad, I don’t remember if we took the couch with us to the new house or set it on fire in the driveway. That’s how memory works around furious people.
But man, you just can’t imagine all the boogers back there. It was really something.
And you thought Boogers & Corduroy was the name of a new gentlemen’s shoppe.