Mindless Drivel

I'm feeling a lot better today, Ms Journal. I had a toasted fried egg sandwich for breakfast and so far, it's all still in my stomach. I've been desperately thirsty as well, and I've been sipping water and diluted apple juice. I spent most of yesterday sleeping fitfully on the chesterfield.

There's a word we don't use much anymore, eh? Chesterfield. It was common when I was a boy at home. Mum used it nearly every day.

"Stop jumping on that bloody chesterfield!" she'd say. "You'll fall and break your neck!"

We never fell, Ms J. And there were no incidents of broken bones. I imagine we did stir up a lot of dust, though. Poor Mum worked every day to keep a clean house. And we kids (six of us) worked every day to provide that satisfaction for her.

I remember going to visit some relatives in Michigan one summer. Cousins, I guess they were. They lived in Flint, I believe. Flint, Michigan. They talked funny. And we laughed at them behind their backs. They'd never heard of a chesterfield before.

"You mean a davenport?" they asked.

We looked at each other and wrinkled our sunburned noses.

"Um, yeah. Sure. A davenport. It's actually called a chesterfield."

That was thirty or forty years ago. Today, everyone seems to call it a couch. It's a matter of laziness, I suppose. One syllable instead of three. Couch. But the differing dialects remain. To our American cousins, we call it a "coach". Or maybe it sounds to them more like "cooch". And to our Canadian ears, the Yanks open their mowths real wiiiide and call it a cowtch.

Will you listen to me here? What a rambling mess of a post this is! Who the heck cares what it's called? My point is that I spent yesterday there, resting in a horizontal fashion, eyes closed, listening to the television.

Coach. Cooch. Cowtch. Chesterfield. Davenport.

Whatever.

Gawd, I'm boring today. I think I'll go back to work tomorrow.

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