Plastic couches revealed!!

So I stop by my aunt’s house last week. She’s getting old, just turned 80 something, a little senile, but she’s got it together for the most part. She can remember to go to church 5 days a week and remember what night is choir practice, usher board, women in Christ, cake club, etc…, so she’s pretty sharp for an older lady, but every once in a while one of your elders will drop some shit on you that you think is funny, but they’re dead serious.

We were having a Soul Foodesque Sunday brunch. All the players were there, Vivaca Fox, Vanessa Williams, the dirty uncle, the single uncle, the parolee, the person recently out of rehab and of course lots of bad ass kids. These occurrences are so interesting because everyone feels a little out of place because no one relates to anyone else in any capacity other than the fact that my great, great, great grandpa had some game and convinced some unsuspecting country girl to let him ‘put the tip in’.

After a meal that would make Emeril or the Iron Chef blush, we sitting around cleaning when I hear one of my ‘cousins’ ask my 83 year old Aunt,

“Why is there plastic on the couches?”

We all have theories about why the plastic is on the couches in the ‘good room’. You know, that room you can’t go into that has white carpet, etc.. There are historical references that state this was the room that a man asked a woman’s family to grant their daughter his hand in marriage. We know that is the expensive furniture, and back in the day it was a big fucking deal for black people to have a room in their house that they didn’t use!

I had always assumed that this room was somehow related to older generation blacks expressing their wealth in a time period when blacks didn’t have much. (Not much different than it is today though hmmm?) So when they would have company over, that is the room that the adults would go and sit in, but I NEVER saw anyone in that room. The only time I was ever in that room was for Christmas! And all this related to the plastic on the couches. I had always believed they embraced the philosophy “I finally have some good shit. There is no way I’m going to let all the ignorant ass rehab cousin’s kids, the folks from down the block, etc… come in and fuck up my shit!”

I think I was way wrong and it is was so simple and so matter of fact, that I don’t know how I didn’t see it. So when my Aunt bent over to explain this to my little cousin, she got on her knees and looked him straight in the eye and said,

“I have the plastic on the couches, in case Martin Luther King stops by.”

……………………… in case MLK stops by. You know how folks think Tupac is still alive, my aunt feels the same way about MLK. Now you have the secret as to why black people leave the plastic on their couches. JUST IN CASE the Dr. is in the neighborhood and swings by the South side of Chicago for some tea and a donation for the SCLU, she leaves the plastic on the couches……

-c

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