This essay was written for Dr. Joe Kraus' Personal Essay class.

I.
We used to have a couch which sat under the window on the left side of the living room. It was black and white and made out of whatever that rough fabric couches are made of—you know the kind, where you don’t want to fall asleep with your face directly on it because you’ll wake up with the rough cross marks on your face?

It wasn’t really the softest couch. Modern couch technology never really caught up to it. I assume it was at least twice a hand-me-down because the front wasn’t soft at all, more like a piece of wood with cloth over it, no padding. It wasn’t the most attractive blend of black and white plaid, but it seemed to match the rest of the room if only for the fact that nothing really matched at all.

I may have been the only person who liked this couch so much. Someone would hate it because it was too heavy, it wouldn’t be comfortable enough for another, and still another would say it was too short to lie on. Regardless, it had an endearing quality to it. As uncomfortable or as clunky as it may have been, I’d never seen a couch quite like it before. Sometimes an object can be so bad that you want to keep it to show other people, “Look at this, it’s the worst couch ever!” That wasn’t exactly how I felt, but maybe that’s why we hung on to it for so long. I may remember all the couches that we’ve had over time in our house, because a person of such a worldly physique needs to know where he’ll be sitting, but this couch will always stand out as my favorite, if not for its charming nature then the memories I have of it.

II.
“Is that vodka?”
“No, Gatorade. Strawberry.”
“Hmph—would you like anything to drink?”
“Nah, thanks.”
“How come?”
This is my least favorite part of the college party scene. At this moment in the conversation I, the non-drinker, like to look around for a larger distraction to point the intoxicated to. Just my luck though, everybody’s being tame… damn kids. The brunette interrogating me seems harmless enough, with the light complexion that looks like it would show vivid color if she were very drunk, but she isn’t, just curious I guess.
“Have you ever drunk before?”
“Nope.”
“How do you know you won’t like it?”
“I just don’t think I will.”
“Well, you never know…”
“Yeah,” I say apologetically, sick of all the questions, “But my dad’s a recovering alcoholic and I really don’t trust the genes.”
“Oh,” the girl backs off really fast, as if I’ve gotten defensive. I actually feel bad for defending myself though; I know the reality of alcoholism at a drinking party is a bit of a downer, so I usually don’t like to bring it up. She looks into her drink and continued to dip a Tootsie Pop into it and licking the lollipop. I wonder if that creates an extra buzz or if she just needs a new way to drink.

III.
My dad left my family when I was three years old. I think I remember more than what you might expect a three-year-old to remember about that night, but the specific reasons for his leaving are still unclear. Things seem so much bigger when you’re that small, and the twelve-foot hallway we had seemed to be a mile long; at the end of that mile was my mom and dad. From far away I couldn’t hear, or at least remember, the words that made it down the hallway, but there was no reason to hear them, it was obvious something wasn’t right. The words weren’t really that important, though I do remember being told to sit down on the old black and white couch to watch TV while my sister sat on the other couch. We were probably separated because we were causing a ruckus of some sort, insensitive to the stresses of our parents, but in the most innocent of ways. I can’t recall exactly what was on the TV, but again, that wasn’t very important.

What strikes me the most was when my father came into the room in his traditional insulated flannel shirt over a stained Hanes tee shirt and jeans and held me as he gave a hurried kiss on the cheek, “I gotta go.” It didn’t cross my mind to wonder where he was going or when he’d be back, but kids don’t need to worry about that stuff—they live for the here and now. The next day Dad wasn’t back and those days repeated. My mother would never say that Dad left us or he was a bad man. If Mom would say anything, it would just be that Dad was sick and he was getting help. It would be a very long time before he got help, but we’d see him before then anyway. After he kissed my sister and left the living room I leaned back in the couch and watched some recycled cartoon plot line unfold for the millionth time.

IV.
“Is there anywhere to sit, Kellie?” I ask one of the gracious hosts.
“Why do you need a seat? What’ve you been up to?” The brunette is back. I don’t much mind the questions, but it’s strange revealing all the major experiences in your life to a stranger in one night.
“I did a lot of standing tonight, and I have a bad knee, and I went to a county fair,” I say, hoping that the mention of a fair would segue into a new topic.
“What’s wrong with your knee?” I guess she wants it all in one night.
“When I was ten I had a cancerous tumor taken out of my knee, it was attached to a muscle so I have one less muscle to work with, too.”
“Wow,” she says, eyes wide, looking surprised at my double misfortune.
“It was the same cancer Robert Urich had.” That line never brings people back to normal conversation.

V.
When my sister and I were a bit older we would still fight. We were about the same size, but we never got too gritty. In this particular instance, my sister and I were in a pushing type of fight, probably over some toy or game. Those fights probably brought us closer over time instead of having pushed us apart. In this particular fight, though, my sister gave me a big push. As I stumbled across the room I found myself heading right for our black and white couch. I didn’t worry at all because I knew the top was soft, but I forgot that front that felt like thick wood wrapped in thin fabric. My knee slammed right into the wood and the sharpest pain that I’ll ever remember ran straight up my leg. I fell onto the couch holding my knee and crying. Through the tears I told my sister not to freak out because this had happened before. I would be okay in a few minutes, it was just an unbearable amount of pain to tolerate for those minutes. My sister obviously felt bad and I think I won the fight by default, but the memory of the event stuck in my head.

As time went on and the pain progressed I eventually went to the doctor’s to see what this chronic knee pain was all about. The doctor asked if anything traumatic had ever happened to my knee and I, being nine, saw this as a great opportunity to get my sister back. I recalled the event with the black and white couch, but my mom passed it off as another fight between brother and sister. It was, but the knee pain wasn’t so simple. After explorative surgery it became clear that a muscle in my knee had a cancerous tumor attached to it. At nine years old I wasn’t bright enough to take the root word “cancer” from “cancerous,” so I figured more surgery meant more toys and presents. When I put all the pieces together and knew what I was going up against I was worried, but I still remember waking up from anesthesia and reaching for my full-grown leg, still attached, and feeling a great relief.

VI.
“Yeah, so I have to go home next weekend,” I inform a friend whom I spend a lot of time with, knowing that he may want cross my name off the list of people to visit for that weekend.
“Aw man.”
“Where ya goin’?” The brunette returns again. I suppose I can’t complain, I haven’t really made a strong effort to get away from her. After all, with all the sympathy she must be feeling, I want to let her know I’m a normal person.
“I have to go home for a doctor’s appointment and help my mom trim some trees before winter comes and it gets too cold out.”
“Can’t your dad?”
“Well, he doesn’t live with us.”
“Oh my God.”

VII.
“You’ve had such a rough life,” the brunette said as she hugged me at the end of the night, “You take care.”
I think I am. It’s been seventeen years since my dad left and ten years cancer-free, so I feel like I’m ‘coping’ just fine, and maybe that’s the best part. I don’t even know that I’m coping at all. If you live a life like mine you get to take a few personal laughs at the world around you. When a friend is worried about what people will think if they wear a certain shirt or if they’ll make it through life without a certain special person in their life anymore, you can grab a quick snicker to yourself before you turn on the good-friend-button and start consoling. It’s not like I don’t experience these same worries, God knows I may feel it more than anyone, but when cancer enters your life at ten-years-old you know that you’ll make it through the occasional, “That’s a nice shirt—where do you plug it in?”

I wouldn’t trade my life for anything because it’s the culmination of ‘traumatic’ experiences that have made me who I am today. Without cancer I may not have such strong faith or such a strong bond with my mother. Without knee surgery maybe all those people who said, “You’re a big guy—ever try football?” would have been onto something. What makes everything so great in the end is to sit back and say, “Oh well.” Maybe I missed out on a football career, though I’ve never been one for voluntary pain, but it wasn’t in the plans for me and I’m not bitter about any of that. To anyone outside of me I may have had a rough life, but to me having cancer and a single-parent is just like learning to ride a bike or a getting a driver’s license: there was a challenge and it was overcome. It’s that simple.

We lost the black and white couch a long time ago and I was sad to see it go, but I can still remember it like it was still in our living room, right where a china cabinet and small table sit now. I still have a place in my heart for the hideous couch, for reasons that aren’t quite easy for me to understand so well.