The Swan Bed I may as well warn you now that this isn’t much of a story, but it makes me laugh every time I think about it, so here goes.→[More:]When I bought my condo 5.5 years ago, I had almost no home furnishings. I had bedroom furniture and sub minimal kitchen supplies (i.e., no drinking glasses, just four souvenir mugs), and one chair. I would invite my guests to “have the seat”.

My mother came down to visit soon after I moved in and she informed me that she was going to give me money for a housewarming present. I whipped out pencil and paper and figured out that with that money to spend, I could afford to get a couch immediately instead of having to wait a couple of months. I asked her if she would mind if I used that money to partly pay for a couch rather than use it to buy something that she could think of as having been entirely from her. No, she didn’t mind at all.

So we headed off to shop for a couch. I was armed with a list of stores and addresses copied down from the yellow pages, but we missed the store we were looking for and wound up at Jane and Finch, where my mother espied a store called “Excellent Furniture” (yes, that’s the actual name). Now, I knew nothing good would come of our visiting a store that is called Excellent Furniture and is located at Jane and Finch, one of the worst areas in Toronto. But my mother insisted on checking it out, saying I couldn’t possibly know what their stock would be like without seeing it.

I know from long experience that there is no point in trying to convince my mother that I really do know what I’m talking about. There’d been an incident already involving my one chair, which I had salvaged off someone’s curb when I was 20. It was a little upholstered rocker, in very shape structurally, but the upholstery was horribly worn and could not have been attractive in its best days. She told me she would upholster it for me. I said no thank you, I didn’t like the chair all that much as it is too small and low for me to find comfortable, so I was just going to keep an afghan thrown over it until I got some other chairs and could get rid of it. She insisted that it was a perfectly good chair and just needed some work. I said no thank you. Then the next time I talked to her, she said, “Well, I bought some fabric for your chair.” So she got her way, and redid the chair. She did do a lovely job, and I still have the chair. I practically never sit in it, but some of my petite guests do. Namely her.

So, knowing it was no use to argue, I saved my breath for the good laugh I was going to have when she saw what it was like. We went into the store. The furniture was every bit as bad as I expected. I can only describe the general style of it all as Early Late Bordello crossed with Trailer Lite. Red plush buttoned sofas. Tiny dinette sets with tipsy chairs. Ornately decorated fake cherry wood stained everything. I walked about eight feet behind my mother as she toured about and the aghast, stunned look on her face (which expression renewed itself at the sight of every new piece) was quite enjoyable. At one point she turned a corner, saw something that was out of my line of vision and stopped dead, making slight choking sounds. I hastened to catch up with her and see what she was seeing, because I knew it was going to be good. I wasn’t disappointed. It was a bedroom set made out of what appeared to be some sort of heavy duty white plastic, and there was a sort of swan motif set in relief on the headboard and over the mirror on the dresser and on the top of the chest of drawers, with its neck and head curving up over the peak. (This was before I became Orange Swan, or I would have enjoyed the vision it presented all the more.)

We left the store immediately and took refuge in the nearest Leon’s, where I bought a fairly basic, ivory couch I quite liked. I teased her that if I were to get that bedroom set I would have to take up a life of sin. Which, actually, I did long ago and about which she is in total denial, but that’s another story.