Today you're Couch Connie.

Your Dad ran a moving company and he was killed by a couch. It was being raised up to the third floor to try and get it through the window of an apartment because it couldn’t fit through the door. The cord snapped and the couch dropped right on your Dad’s head, snapping his neck. In an exploit the local news called "incredible in it's physical improbability" Daddy had tumbled down three flights of stairs into the street and his face was ran over by three taxis before a homeless person dragged him onto the sidewalk.

“He left the business to me,” you’re telling a customer. “And I’ve built it into a small local empire. I did it with hatred in my heart.”

The logo on your trucks reads “Your Furniture Killed My Daddy, And I Will Never Let Your Furniture Get The Upper Hand Again.” As Couch Connie, you promise that you will be in control at every point in the move. No one will ever see you or your team members hesitating or guessing at an angle or a width for getting a couch or an armoire through a doorway. You’re always ten steps ahead of your furniture. You’ve already carried their couch up the steps and around the corners and through the vestibule and into the living room before your customers have even finished packing. 

“It’s about not letting the furniture get the jump on me,” you’re telling your customer. “Like my Dad did.”

This is the point where you turn to the portrait of your Father that hangs over the register, the portrait is imposing and massive, to the point where the front teeth in your Father's smile are the size of  index cards and his presence dominates the room in it's 9 foot portrait.

“You were sloppy, Daddy,” you state plainly to the mammoth rendering.

The customers are getting uncomfortable.

“SLOPPY!” you shriek. “YOU!  WERE!  SLOPPY!  DADDY!”

You’re now sobbing uncontrollably. Spit is coming out of your mouth as you scream.

“HOW COULD YOU, DADDY! HOW COULD YOU LET A COUCH TAKE YOU AWAY FROM ME?! HOW? DID YOU WANT IT TO TAKE YOU AWAY? DID YOU NOT WANT TO BE WITH ME AND MOMMY ANY MORE? WHYDIDN'TYOULOVEUSDADDYWHYYY!?”

The customers are moved to tears with you. You barely even know they’re there anymore.

“WHYYYYYYY DADDY? WHYYYYYY?”

You've bitten your tongue, it hurts and though it takes a minute you gradually recede back to a less manic state. You blink the tears away and turning to the customers, you raise your arm high and slam your fist down on their moving contract. 

The wife of one of your customers starts to tell you blood is dripping off of your chin, but you cut her off.

“As God as my witness,” you snarl through gritted teeth. “I will tame your furniture. I will be its master during the entire course of your move. Your furniture wants to be damaged to prove that it cannot be subjugated to human will. I will make very clear to your furniture that on this matter, it is very mistaken.”

Your customers sign their contract, and then the three of you hug and cry together. 

Today you're going to take a road trip with your beloved family!

It's summertime.  You have two weeks off from working in the small state farm outlet where your Dad is an agent and pays you 7 measly dollars an hour to type and to rub his temples when he gets a migraine.  Your husband has been laid off from the Callahan Brake Pad Factory.  Your son Jack got kicked out of day care for stealing cigarettes from the yard attendant and you're afraid if you leave your daughter alone at the house for more than an hour she will without a doubt lose her virginity.

Time to get your snot-nosed brat kids into the back seat and your husband in the front and hit the fucking road.

“WHY ARE YOU DRIVING SO FAST? IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! WHERE ARE WE GOING!” your kids and husband will shout. Tell them to shut their goddamn mouths or you’ll drive through a guardrail into a gulch and kill them all.

“Road trips are supposed to be spontaneous,” you explain once they’re all silent and shaking with fear. “We’re going to drive and have dangerous adventures until something about us CHANGES.”

First stop is downtown Cleveland, where you'll pull into bars and pick fights.

Later in New Orleans you'll visit the grave of a voodoo queen.  Legend has it if you draw three red x's in chalk on her tomb she will grant you a wish.  Your wish is that you were dead.  Your husband stoops down, draws three x's and stands up, loudly proclaiming "I wish that the Packers would make the playoffs" with his eyes closed.

You erase your old set of x's, draw three new ones.  You'll wish your husband was dead.

Your daughter sexts her boyfriend the entire time, while your son urinates on a gravestone that reads "Beloved Aunt."

From then on you stop reading street signs and point the car in random directions.  Somewhere on the eastern seaboard you transport crystal meth and pick up hitchhikers who remember seeing the ghost of Freddie Mercury and you come to the aid of a crashed crop duster, managing to rescue the pilot before his plane bursts into flames.

You drive for four more months, and when you pause to celebrate your daughter’s fifteenth birthday and your son’s ninth by the lip of the grand canyon, you all finally agree that you've each discovered something about yourselves that has changed you forever.

“I hate the road,” your daughter says.

“I hate America,” your son says.

“I hate anyone who isn't caucasian,” your husband says.

“I want to spend the rest of my life in a tree,” you say.

Your husband hoists you up into a tree then he and your two kids wave goodbye as you climb higher and higher. Your husband says he’ll come back in a few months with divorce papers, but that he’s glad you’ve discovered yourself, and that you won’t be in his life to drag him on another awful trip like this one ever again.

Today you'll leave What's His Face!

"Don't forget the ice cube trays, bitch."

You've just received word that Jacques is still alive all these years later, that when his car went off that cliff he wasn't in it, that for one reason or another he needed you and everyone else to believe he was dead.

“Guess we need to get a divorce,” you say to your second husband, Robert.

Robert won’t be happy. “You don’t have to go back to him! He’ll understand that you thought he was dead and moved on.”

Tell Brad you didn't move on. You thought you did, but you didn't have a day go by where you didn't have to consciously push Jacques out of that little space he occupies in the back of your mind.  Tell Robert he’s a really sweet guy and he’s pretty great in the bedroom department and you've had a fun time these six years during which he helped raise your kids as his own, but he’s no Jacques.

“But you don’t even know why he faked his death,” Robert will say. “For all you know he didn't even care how his death affected you. For all you know he left town and traveled far away and faked his death to get away from you.”

Explain to Robert that that might be the case, but now that you know Jacques is alive again there's really no reason you should pretend not to be completely bored of Robert any more, and that you're out like disco.

“Tonight! What? You’re just going to…Ow!”

Apologize for dropping your suitcase on his head while trying to get it out of the closet.

Robert will switch gears and start to tick off reasons on his fingers why you should feel guilty.

“Sorry Robert,” say. “I’m just in a hurry. Want to try to get Jacques to see me naked before he changes his mind again.”

Robert will be exasperated. “You’re supposed to be conflicted about this kind of thing! You’re supposed to be searching your heart to find out if you still love him or if you having mourned him and married someone new has effectively closed the chapter on that part of your—”

“Sorry, not conflicted. Jacques is alive! Thanks for subbing in as my husband for a while!” you’ll shout from the window of your car as you speed out of your driveway, laughing at a text Jacques had sent to you a few seconds ago.

Robert will go inside to find your kids packing their things. “You’re not our Dad anymore! You’re just Robert now!”

Robert will go into the bedroom and try to get used to just being Robert now, just being Robert now that Jacques is alive again.

Today, you'll go to a pool party.

Welcome to our Ool Party.  Notice there's no P in it.  Please keep it that way

You knew about it all week and you waited and you waited but finally Friday night came and you never got the invite to the office pool party that you were desperately waiting for.  You waited by the water cooler when Mark walked by, hoping he would glance at you and a light bulb would go off above his head and he'd say hey why didn't you RSVP on the Facebook event calendar that you're going to the pool party?  

And you let your pen slide off your desk and onto the floor when Sharise walked by so that she would stop and pick it up for you.  When she handed it to you, you said thanks and looked right at her so she would be forced to acknowledge you and when that happened she would suddenly realize she had totally forgotten to include you in the mass office memo.

Neither Mark nor Sharise ever said anything about the office pool party.

So the next day you'll drive your Sebring out to Sharise's house and climb a tree in the front yard to watch all you co-workers splash around in their bathing suits, enjoying their time without you like you never even existed.  Laurie is wearing a yellow one-piece and she's laughing so hard at something Aaron said that she's bending over and holding her stomach with the hand that isn't holding her Grey Goose martini.

From your vantage point, you'll see your co-workers swim and tan and drink fruity drinks and sneak off to make out under the shade of the very tree in which you're hiding, and the whole scene will make you feel incredibly alone.  So alone that you'll start to cry, and you'll cry loud enough that your co-workers will hear you and they'll run to the base of the tree and set it on fire.  

The flames will rise, forcing you into an impossible dilemma; either you leap down to safety where you will doubtlessly be humiliated for coming and spying on a party which you were not invited to, or you stay in the tree and slowly burn to death on its branches.

You'll stay in the tree and burn to death on its branches.

Today, Cosmopolitan is going to spell it out for you!

Top ten ways to make your boobs extra-pointy.

He’s been working a lot. Cosmo says when he works a lot it means he might be working on loving someone new.

He’s showering a lot. Cosmo says when he showers a lot it’s because he’s washing off the lingering scent of someone new.

He’s constantly singing love songs out loud without any cause for a love song to be sung. Cosmo says if he spontaneously bursts out into love songs it’s because those love songs are songs he has to sing when he thinks about someone new.

He occasionally shows up covered in mud. Cosmo says when your man shows up muddy it’s because he had to dispose of the bodies of the people who witnessed him giving all his lovin' to someone new.

He bought seven new cars. Cosmo says a man has no reason to buy a lot of new cars unless he’s going on long moonlight drives with someone special, someone young, someone fun, someone who is anyone, anyone at all, anyone at all but you.

He has crabs. Cosmo says there ain’t no other reason for a man to have crabs unless those crabs hopped to his pubic hair from the pubic hair of someone who isn't you.

He’s been spending a lot of time in his super-secret second apartment and according to Cosmo, a man should spend an average of no more than two nights a week in his super-secret second apartment unless he’s using that super-secret second apartment to spend super-secret time with someone secret and new.

He can sometimes be found with his penis inside the vagina of another woman. In the immortal words of Cosmopoliton, “There is simply no reason for your man to store his manhood upon or up inside the womanhood of a woman who, for all intents and purposes is not you, unless your man is interested in the womanhood under the operation of a woman other than you, AKA a woman who happens to be someone new.

He has a shoehorn.  You read in Cosmo that shoehorns are luxury items that a man uses to facilitate the process of applying footwear to his feet.  It goes on to say that why would a man be in such a hurry that he would feel the need to eliminate the precious seconds that is required of one to actually bend over to put on a shoe and instead use a tool to do so if he wasn't using those extra seconds to be lying on his back in someone else's apartment with some other women that isn't you sitting on his face?

He says he met someone new. If Cosmo is correct, a man never says he met someone new unless he’s decided that you are someone old and there’s another one, a different one, a one who in your man’s eyes is someone who alleviates that “I’m scared of not mattering anymore” feeling, a one who can only be described as someone new.

Since your man meets all ten criteria, it’s time to tell him that you wish him well but you understand that the heart cannot be tamed, girlfriend.

Today, you're going to live (however pathetically) in the moment!

You and Marcy's husband Roy are staying behind because you both have leg injuries, while Marcy and your husband Jake go hiking through the snow to try to find food and hopefully a ranger who can find a way to get you all down off this mountain. 

And the only cure for cabin fever is?

“They could be gone for days and they might not make it back,” Roy will say, limping around the cabin. “We should start having sex now.”

“How can you—”

“Oh spare me!” Roy shouts. “The longer you play this game of being the loyal, loving wife grateful to her husband for risking his life for you, the less sex we’re having.”

“But they’ve barely just left,” you say. “Look, I can still see them. They’re waving.”

You motion for Roy to come to the window and wave back to them. Roy slaps you.

“Dammit you need to think realistically,” he shouts. “If we wait to have sex until we’re sure they’re dead, we might be too weak to even feel sexual, not to mention we’ll be trying to come to grips with the reality that our spouses have died somewhere out there in the snow, possibly never to have their bodies found by anything but packs of hungry wolves. Think you’ll be up for boning with the image of your husband’s limp body being shredded to ribbons by bloodthirsty wolves on your mind?”

You concede that no, you would not. Neither would Roy, he says. He loves Marcy way too much to cheat on her while her body is being eaten by animals.

“And supposing we do wait,” Roy continues. “And when we manage to have sex we find out we are the perfect mates for each other, that the sex is the best we’ve ever had. But, oops, we waited too long and we’re too dehydrated and hungry to have sex a second time. Almost more tragic than if we’d never had sex at all! We’d die regretting that we waited, regretting that we stood on formality instead of grabbing as much erotic opportunity from what little time we had left.”

You’ve spent too much of your life regretting things. Roy is right. You love Jake, but waiting to be sure he’s dead before you have sex with Roy is just another instance of you living as if tomorrow is some kind of guarantee.

You take off your clothes and Roy enters you for approximately 30 seconds before Jake and Marcy burst into the cabin with a half-dozen park rangers. The rangers had been hiking up the mountain when they bumped into Jake and Marcy having frantic sex against a snow bank around 200 feet from the cabin’s front door.

Today, love in an elevator.

You know how every great once in a while, you'll be going about your own business when all of the sudden something or other happens and you stop and go 'wow, I'm going to remember this moment forever'?

Yeah, you think about those a lot.

Today your going to walk into your apartment building at the asscrack of dawn still wearing your clothes from last night.  You fell asleep on the couch at Bella's boyfriends house after fighting off the drunken advances of some guy named Lance.  You swear an oath to yourself to never date anyone named Lance.

Anyways, you've also sworn off drinking and you have a grocery bag full of pastries and greens, with which you are making a celebratory healthy breakfast to put your most likely futile plan of sobriety into full effect.  The heels you're still wearing from the previous night make you wobble a little as you breeze through the glass doors to the lobby just in time to see the elevator door start to slide shut.

There's someone in the elevator.  "Wait!"  You call out.

The someone sticks his arm in between the elevator doors and they bounce back open, chivalry ain't dead yet.

So you'll clomp your way in and dump your little big of silly crap on the floor.  It promptly spills out half the contents; a bag of pita bread and some hummus, a cantaloupe, and something you think is a quiche but weren't sure.

"Looks like your representing the cuisines of about 8 different cultures this morning," the man remarks.

You smile and make a show of rolling your eyes.  "Yeah well."

There is a pause as both of you wait for a follow up.  You sigh.

There's someone else in the elevator.  It's a small boy, about 3 years old.  Seems a bit hyperactive.  You watch as he dances his way over to the button panel and whangs the heel of his palm against it, lighting up every floor.  You look at his Dad to gauge his reaction but he is busy picking up dates and water cashews and packets of semi-exotic herbal tea that you will probably never drink.

You open your mouth but before anything comes out the hyperactive little boy crows joyously and hammers on the emergency stop button.  The elevator lurches to a sickening halt, sending pistachios and raspberries everywhere.

"Oh, shit!  Dodger!  No!"  The man says.  He grabs the boy lightly by the arm and gives him a swat on his rear.  If this punishment had any disciplinary effect, Dodger's face failed to register it.

You look him over.  He's wearing the tiniest plaid shirt you've ever seen and has the smallest checkered vans on his feet.  Dodger pops over in front of you, and you see that this child is never going to be a beauty.  His brown eyes are flecked with gold but they are too close together, a shock of orange hair rests on the top of his head like a brush fire, and jug ears poke out of the side of his head like the handles of pink fleshy teacups, but you look at him and you still love him.

For lack of better things to do as good 'ol Dad gets the elevator going again, you crouch down in front of the boy, cover your eyes with your hands and then you take them away and you say Boo.

The boy squeals high-pitched laughter and hops up and down with his hands flapping loosely at the wrist, making you wish that anything could make you that excited.   You're having fun so you do it again.  And again.

"Dodge, leave the nice lady alone," says Dad.

Neither of you stop.

It isn't until the doors have been standing open for a few seconds that you realize the elevator has arrived at your floor.  Dodger is shrieking with laughter as you collect yourself, a big cheesy grin smeared across your face.  You pick up your swearing off drinking breakfast bag and stand up, barely registering how the man is just standing there regarding you with a bemused expression.  There's a pregnant silence again.

Ok, you tell yourself, now I just feel stupid.  You say bye to Dodger as he dances around your feet and you get off the elevator, your face a little heated.

You've gone four steps out of the elevator and down the hall to your room when Dodger's Dad speaks up from behind you.

"You know, when he grows up he's going to fall in love with a girl who looks just like you, and he's not going to have any clue as to why."

You turn around.

The elevator door is closing fast as he leans out to say, "But I will."