If Furniture Could Talk - 3. Kitchen Table Kirk

I remember when I first moved into this house. Oh, I’m Kirk, by the way. I’m a table. I’m technically a dining room table, but when my family moved into this house, there wasn’t a dining room. Hence the name change. I wonder if I got papers for that? You know, like a driver's lic... Oh. Yeah. Probably not.

It was a pretty good life for a while. Then the Balors had a baby. Now, normally, having a baby would be completely of no concern to a table. Well, unless you were a changing table. Seems the Balors didn't have one of those. It wasn't long before I took on a second role. I always wondered why someone would change their baby's diaper where they would eat. Seemed kind of gross to me. But what do I know? I'm as dumb as a block of wood. Hmm, I guess that's true, and not just a saying.

Anyway, their baby was a little boy. I don't know if you're aware, but when the cold air hits a little boy's peepee, that's what he does. He goes peepee. I understand some people like getting peed on. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Talk about disgusting. And when the dad changed the baby on me, I guess he couldn't do it without a beer or some other alcoholic beverage in one hand. That pretty much left at least one of the baby's hands free to explore. I hope dad did a better job wiping the shit off the kid's hand than he did with me. A paper towel just didn't cut it.

Oh, and mom? Wrapping a paper towel around the kid's bleeding head doesn't work too well either. Duct tape or not. But that came later. Devlin wasn't a baby anymore by then. Well, not technically. He never did act like he knew much more than a baby. Maybe he was, you know, slow. Is retarded a bad word to use for someone like that? Eh, maybe he was just stupid.

So, dad wipes the shit off me with a paper towel. I should say he wiped the shit around on me. Shit's brown. I'm brown. I guess dad didn't see how much of it he left on me. Fortunately, mom did. Although she didn't notice it right away the first time she came into the kitchen when I had shit on my face.

"What's that smell?"

Mom looked all around on the floor. I'd be yelling 'up here' if I could yell. But I can't; no mouth. Although, I guess when my leaf is out and my sides are still separated, I kind of look like I have a mouth. But I digress. She even got down on her hands and knees, like a dog. Maybe she figured it was dog shit and if she acted like one, she'd be able to figure out where it was. Nope, didn't work. But it was funny when she finally did figure it out. She used my top for support while she was standing up.

Want to guess where she put her hand? Damn, could she scream. But after that, if she had that look like 'ewww something stinks,' she knew where to look first.

Ever get crayon rubbed on your face? Not pleasant either. I had no way to tell the kid to just color on the paper. Coloring between the lines? Even more of a foreign concept to the little putz. And did you know Sharpie made permanent markers in a wide range of colors? I do now. I lost three layers of wax from the mom trying to get that shit off of me. Yo! Mom! P-E-R-M-A-N-E-N-T! Look it up. It means it don't fuckin' come off. Ever. You've heard the term scarred for life? No, wait. That comes later. I guess stained for life applied at that point in time.

OK. Moving on to the scars. What's a good age to let your kid have a knife? Thirty? Forty? It sure as hell ain't six, that's for sure. OK, so it was what they call an x-acto knife. It was still fucking sharp. Thin lines for sure, but dozens of them? To add to my misery, the little bastard thought he could cover them up with a brown Sharpie. Yo, kid, there are different shades of brown. I'm a bit darker than that tan shit you tried to use. Yuck. I just remembered one time when it literally was tan colored shit on me. Excuse me while I run to the bathroom and barf.

No, I really can't do that. But I can get barfed on. The bowl of canned spaghetti was in the microwave for about a day before Devlin tried to eat it. Oh, he ate it alright. Digest it? Not a chance. It didn't take but two minutes before it was all over me. Give me that x-acto knife over a puddle of vomit any day.

Bigger boys, bigger knives, I guess. OK, on the grand scheme of things, it was still a pretty small knife. A pocketknife they called it. Wish it would have cut a hole in Devlin's pocket before he got to me. Hell, his leg too. He was around twelve by this time. I've spent the rest of my life with the crude cut out drawing of a vagina on me. But wait, it gets worse. He added a dick to the drawing not too long after the vagina first showed up.

That did get me a tablecloth to wear most of the time, though. Except when Devlin did homework. Or shall I say homewreck? One time, he apparently was taking chemistry, and the assignment was to make acetylsalicylic acid. That's aspirin, by the way. Somehow, he got hold of the wrong bunch of ingredients and the acid he ended up with was not aspirin. If I didn't know better, I'd say hydrochloric acid was the result of his experiment. Damn did that shit burn. Although, on the plus side, it eliminated some of those Sharpie marks.

Devlin turned fourteen and he begged for and was granted a dog. You've probably heard the term ankle-biter? Yeah, well that's what he ended up with. Ankles my ass. Now, I don't actually have ankles; smiles, beads, and coves, to be perfectly accurate, are what I came with, and I guess the beads could look like an ankle. They must have, to this dog. But those parts of my legs are completely unrecognizable now. The dumb pooch... Well, I guess it was smart enough to not nibble at the microwave stand's 'ankles.' They are also known as casters and look like they're metal. And why the fuck isn't the microwave on the microwave stand? Junk stand is more like it. The microwave was on the kitchen counter for the longest time until Devlin was almost nine. Then it disappeared. They brought in a new one at one point, but they hid it behind a locked cabinet door. Apparently, Devlin didn't use the previous one properly.

Ya think? He couldn't use a table properly, what chance did a microwave have?

Epilogue

Unfortunately for Kirk, the ankle-biter eventually performed an amputation of one of Kirk's feet. With the scratches and stains on the surface, the Balors decided not to repair the table. It was not a pretty end for Kirk. His legs were torn off. Well, what was left of them anyway. Then a reciprocating saw was used to slice his top up. After that, it was out to the back yard for a cremation in the fire pit. Devlin was tasked with putting out the dying embers at the end of the night. But did he get a bucket of water? No. The remnants of Kirk got the same treatment as long ago from Devlin's diaper changes. Yep, pissed on one final time.

The End