birds and bees and beds and futons

This place was massive, a warehouse the size of a suburb, filled with furniture for the Sunday consumers. We all sat together in one of the display rooms, the whole family. We were spread out all over the thick cushioned lounge, it was long, so we all fit on it comfortably. My father said it reminded him of the lounge his family sat on, in their fifth storey flat in a grey concrete apartment building in Wroclaw during the 70’s. We lazed around, tired from a frantic sleepless night of moving furniture, boxes and white goods, our muscles ached and our caffeine tics toced. We sat and watched the crowds rotate from display kitchen to kitchen to office and through to lounge room; it was a life size dollhouse. We watched the Indian families, the Arabic couples, the trendy lovers, the Chinese children running around, the dread-loched beach siders pushing their newborns in new prams. Sure it sounds diverse but really it was about as multicultural as the furniture they were looking at, same thing just different colours and shapes. For a moment, as the crowds walked past and looked awkwardly at us watching them, I proudly felt like we didn’t fit in.
There was some tacky 70’s hit playing over the system.
“You love this song don’t you?’ I said sarcastically to my old man.
He listened a while.
“I don’t mind it” he replies after some time.
“It brings back memories”
He stared at the high iron ceiling, where the music was apparently coming from, after the chorus passed, he continued…
“When I first came here and I was going to English classes, the teacher brought in the lyrics to this song and the class sang it together. She said it was a good song for us to practice, because it has a lot of verbs”
we listened some more and all looked at each other smiling, my mother, father, brother, sister and I, almost laughing. The song finished and no other followed, just the sound of peoples footsteps hustling about the shiny wooden floors. We were silent for about five minutes whilst my father contemplated with nostalgia in his eyes.
“Her name was Ruth” he said
“My English teacher, she tried one time to explain to us what the word ruthless meant”
I thought about the word a while and then the name. I couldn't think, I felt confused to be here, I think we all did a little. We decided we could make some bookshelves instead and pushed ourselves out of the comfortable lounge and left, walking against the grain of the crowd. Even when my dad was driving down, from the 5-storey car park, he drove in the wrong direction most of the way. People wrinkled their foreheads and waved their hands, palms facing up. We all laughed as my mother grinned nervously and my dad zigzagged through the car park singing the chorus with a strong accent.

“When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
Clinical, intellectual, cynical.”