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Andrew Watch

First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.

When weather forecasters predict a hot day, I’m painfully reminded of an unusual milestone growing up: being stuck to the furniture.

In the sweltering summer months of the early 1960s, I would grab a cold pop and sit on the plastic-encased couch, forgetting that my flesh would adhere to the surface. Moments later I would stand up, screaming as my skin broke the suction from the sofa like a tight seal on a mason jar.

There were benefits and drawbacks to the plastic. A spill was no problem. It would pool and stay in the same place until you had time to wipe it up. You could eat on it; little kids could play, puke or leak their diapers and it was easy to clean. A small tear could be taped, and the bonus was that pets despised it. Sure, you couldn’t sit or sleep comfortably on our plastic-covered couch. It made a crackling sound as you lowered onto it and was so slippery you required the skills of an Olympic figure skater to negotiate your posture while sitting. It wasn’t a place for a nap, sex or pillows: You’d slide off and bang your head against the strategically placed coffee table that always sat in front.

My mother had plastic on everything, from the dining room buffet to the kitchen table. She found so many places to use the synthetic covering that she could have won an Oscar for best set design with plastic. (My mother also adored the convenience of artificial flowers and Windexed them at the same time she disinfected the sofa. Architectural Digest, it was not.)

Reams of industrial runners covered the pristine harvest-gold broadloom that ran the length of the house. Like the magical path in The Wizard of Oz, we couldn’t stray off this shiny road. Plastic even lived on the lamp shades. No LEDs in those days, only high-wattage heat surging through a midcentury style lamp. You could smell the incandescence emanating through the sheer transparent veil. Careless smoking of any kind on this highly combustible piece of furniture would create one of two things: prominent burn holes or a situation calling for “stop, drop and roll.”

It was strange for visitors outside of the plastic-covering culture to understand it as a normal decorating practice. The first question was always: “Why?” To which the reply was: “Why not?”

Plastic was practical. There was Windex to keep it clean and if it cracked, you went to the hardware store at the end of the street and got some more. Ours was immaculate. If my mother wasn’t hosing it down, she was Windexing it. It was so spotless, that when the sun broke through the blinding white sheer curtains, the living room sparkled like the city of Oz (and an affront to the visual senses if one was hung over).

Plastic-covered furniture – we called it condom furniture – has its own culture. The cleaning ladies lived in our neighbourhood, they didn’t come to it. Consequently, whatever you could do to alleviate some part of the housework and maintain a tidy and neat domicile, you employed.

Neighbours, friends and relatives all subscribed to the same taste in design, and eventually, I came to appreciate that I was merely the one that didn’t get it. It was only later that I understood why. The plastic was about preservation – for those who lived through the war and Depression, it was essential to hold onto and look after your things. The word ‘replacement’ didn’t exist.

But one day, this infamous transparent material on the couch was so cracked that my parents resolved themselves to the idea that it was time to have it removed. This declaration required weeks of contemplation and reassessment as to how they would adapt to a lifestyle void of its existence. Pomp and circumstance surrounded the couch’s unveiling. Once off, it looked brand new, introducing itself as a museum piece for the first time. An objet d’art called a chesterfield. The finely embroidered teal fabric, enveloped by the wood-carved frame had a new life. We all stood and stared at it but none of us, especially the kids, would dare sit on it. We had no concept of what the rules were around an object not covered in plastic. My dad went in and sat down, feeling it out for the first time, as we all watched in amazement. Like a model on Let’s Make a Deal, he demonstrated how he didn’t slip and how soft the couch felt. He also mentioned our lives would be in peril if we even thought about eating or drinking on the couch. My mother nodded in agreement.

Once the couch was liberated from its plastic prison, my dad decided that perhaps it was time to shed it in other places. Hallelujah! It came off the hi-fi as well as the hallway buffet, which was traumatic for my mother. She liked to lay her homemade noodles to dry on these surfaces. I enjoyed the hot and humid summers after that. I could sit down and get up without third-degree burns.

I always wondered what happened to that couch. Then, 50 years later, I discovered it in a high-end boutique in a small town about an hour away drive from where I grew up.

“No way, it can’t be!”

I looked at the back of the frame and there was a tiny piece of plastic still attached – yellowed from the passing years and adhered to the thin piping of fabric by one lone staple.

A tsunami of memories flooded through me. There sat this old gal, relatively untouched after all these decades, emanating youth in her bright teal colouring. I realized the 55-year-old couch looked better than me.

It got me wondering: If I was to have encased myself in Saran wrap, could I have successfully preserved myself to the same degree?

Djanka Gajdel lives in Toronto.

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