I plopped on the orange couch, shocked that I had experienced heartbreak in Ikea, of all places. It started with a conversation about possible plates for our apartment and escalated into something much bigger. We couldn’t decide on a sofa, either. Or an ottoman. In the years we’d spent together it was always like this; we couldn’t agree on anything. A movie. A television show. Which park to hike in. I guess I should have seen it coming.
She exploded. She’d had enough. I wanted the white plate with the gray circle. She wanted the white one with the orange line. And now I find myself on an orange couch with no ride home to an apartment that was ours, but will probably just end up hers.
I couldn’t help but wonder if this were the first Ikea breakup over color choices or if this was a common occurrence. It probably happens a lot, considering the strong colors they tend to prefer. Maybe they come onto a loudspeaker and say something like “We have heartbreak over color choices in the Living Room section,” and someone brings the broken person a complimentary plate of Swedish Meatballs.
An Ikea worker in his blue and yellow outfit approaches me, but his hands are meatball-less and he continues right by and into the shortcut to the children’s section.
Photograph by the talented Kate Hiscock. Click the image for her Flickr.
A Flash of Inspiration 