Friday, July 9, 2010

Exactly what is the coffee table for… Coffee, Tea, or Me?

Coffee tables are the nemeses of living rooms. Please don’t get me wrong…I am a self proclaimed coffee snob and I am sure our local Starbucks most likely survives upon my clan’s weekly procurement of "Sumatra" beans…but I do not…cannot abide the coffee table.


I love coffee, the thick Mississippi Mud variation of the brew is my favorite way to have it. My coffee is my best friend in the morning, with its smoky tendrils of steam wafting up my nose it politely but sternly tells me to stop hitting the snooze button and get on with my day. It also greets me in the evening after a long day at work and reminds me that one job has ended and another now must begin…coffee pulls me through the dinner preparations, the homework checking, and the endless errands and promises to keep that are miles to go before I sleep.

So why do I detest the coffee table? Coffee tables are the black holes of living spaces, with their insatiable desire to collect veritable mountains of discarded magazines, pizza boxes, and vessels half full of some sort of liquid (but generally not coffee). This is their every day purpose, they only get dressed up when company is coming over and even then they are concealed with the artful coffee table book. I mean, really does anyone actually come over to your house and say… “Oh, what a lovely coffee table?”

I think not!

Have you ever noticed how the inherent height of a coffee table is perfectly proportioned to take a bite out of your shin as you maneuver around it to sit down at the sofa? Its corners are also magnificently fashioned to create those sexy intriguing white lightening scars you occasionally see in rugged men’s eyebrows. Oh, those men may tell you that the origins of the scar was a particularly bad bar-fight (which I am sure they said they won), but odds are…they were just learning to walk as a babe and the nefarious coffee table could not resist.

So why do so many people have coffee tables? Do they feel it helps center a room as a focal point? Is it a convenient place to eat dinner while watching TV? Does it serve as an adjunct library for the bathroom down the hall? Or was it simply because it was part of the living room suite you had to have at the local furniture store?

Leave a comment and tell me why you have a coffee table, this inquiring mind wants to know.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Personally, I like coffee tables. Don't have one myself, but a friend of mine does. I'm always captivated by it when I'm over. It's just so comfortable and useful. Is that wrong? Love the Frost quote! The woods are lovely, dark and deep...

Unknown said...

I think its awesome that you like coffee tables!

I may not particularly care for them myself, but I passionately believe that your home should reflect the things YOU love.

I am curious to know why you do not have a coffee table though?