”An Object is Due“ originally appeared in Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety Issue #22, Fall 2010. http://www.forkliftohio.com

An object is due

By Peter Turchi

An object is due to be brought to our house soon; any minute now. My wife and I have been waiting several weeks for this object to be delivered. We first saw the object first became aware of its existence–about two months ago, though of course we had seen many objects like it previously; you could even say we have been looking at objects like it all our lives. The object we’re waiting for is similar, in many ways, to an object my parents had in their house when I was a child, and which my mother has in her house now. For that matter, this object is very similar to many objects in many people’s houses.

When we first saw this object, we admired it. We touched it. We might have mentioned some desire to own it, but that may have come later. A few days later, we went back to where the object was and looked at it again. We looked at other objects like it. We grew excited about the possibility of buying the object, of having it in our house. We felt it would give us pleasure and, secondarily, give our guests pleasure, though I don’t think either of us mentioned guests.

We delayed making a decision. I got online and read about the maker of the object. I looked to see what other people thought of the object and its maker. I was glad to see that other people liked objects made by the maker, though I suspected that much of the admiration was in fact advertising. I didn’t find any negative criticism of the object or its maker. If I had, that might have influenced us. Finally, my wife and I decided to buy the object. This is a process we’ve been through before, such as when we bought our toaster.

The object was not inexpensive. Expense is relative, of course. What I mean is that the object can serve a function, but we could buy another object to serve the same function for much less money. Our primary interest in this object is aesthetic. The expense was great enough to give us pause; the cost was more than we’ve spent on anything other than houses, cars, education, certain trips, my wife’s viola, and one or two other objects. We didn’t need the object that is, if we had not bought the object, we would not have felt the need to buy another, similar object. By that standard, the object is unnecessary. And while the object serves a function, we don’t intend to use it for that or any other function. In other words, the object is useless.

We are excited about the pending arrival of this unnecessary and useless object. We’ve planned our day around it. We’ve talked about exactly where it will go. In the next few hours possibly in the next few minutes a truck will pull up in front of our house and the object will be delivered. My wife and I will look at it and, if all goes well, we will be pleased. Visitors will see it the object will be in a prominent place in our home and express their admiration or (in the case of a few relatives, almost certainly) their disapproval, or they will say nothing at all. They might think, ”How frivolous these people are! Buying objects like that one makes no sense. They don’t even use it. It is also ugly.“ They might think, ”How very wealthy these people are! And what good taste they have! I admire and envy them.“ They might think other things.

As for my wife and I, we will get pleasure from looking at the object, at least for a while. At some point, no doubt, it will become something like invisible, from familiarity. Only when new visitors come and say something about it, or look at it but don’t say anything, will we notice it again, and think whatever we think of it then. Perhaps we’ll cherish it for the rest of our lives. Perhaps we’ll regret having exchanged our money, which could have been used to buy other objects, such as bananas, for this object. Perhaps we’ll become tired of it and sell it, or give it away. Possibly it will be stolen, destroyed, or damaged in some less dramatic way.

My wife and I expect to get more objects. Our lives are full of them.