What a minute? Wasn’t that here a minute ago?

Ever since I’ve worked in this department (and for years and years previously) a truly hideous couch, coffee table, end tables (with ugly lamps) and some ottomans have graced the elevator lobby on my floor. The couch, which was really ugly and in need of a good steam cleaning, was some shade of reddish, somewhere between red, pink, and brown, if you can imagine it. And complemented by ugly brass lamps circa 1984. (Once, a really ugly lamp with a terribly ugly lampshade took up residence on another little table on our floor and some of us took it upon ourselves to get rid of it. . . .by putting it in the elevator and pressing the down button. I still wonder what became of that joy-riding atrocity.) Anyway, I digress. There was the ugly couch, the outdated lamps, the coffee table where we’d lay out stuff we wanted to give away for free. And the ottomans. Oh, the ugly striped ottomans. I could curl up in a tiny ball and take a short nap there while waiting for the troops to gather for lunch.

Well, my children, those days are gone.

I just walked into the lobby area to go downstairs for a snack and had the weirdest sense of extreme confusion. Where am I, I wondered. Am I on my floor of the building? (Yes, I was coming from my office, so I had to be on the correct floor, but everything looked so different!) The couch and everything: gone! And it’s not coming back.

It all may have been ugly, but it was our ugly. And I didn’t even get to say good-bye!