Something I noticed while playing episodes of Designing Women from Amazon Prime -- a man from another interior design company walks into their store, bringing with him a book he had borrowed -- he lays the book down on an end table by the sofa, and then -- sits on it!
Not on the sofa, on the end table! - ? He lays down the book (which is more like a large, flat magazine or catalogue) on the table, then sits down on top of the book he just returned, on the end table.
What's weird is, I saw this end-table-sitting behavior on another 1980s situation comedy, The Cosby Show. Don't remember exactly when, but I remember noticing it.
(Maybe terms should be defined. I don't know if everyone uses the same words for these items -- to me, if you have a sofa and you're sitting on it, and in front of your knees is a table, that's a coffee table. If there is a table over to your left, standing by the sofa, then to me that's an end table.
If there's another table on the other side of the sofa, to your right -- that's another end table.)
Either way, and whatever you call them, these tables are not to be sat upon. I was real surprised to see that in The Cosby Show -- using an end table like a bench, to sit on, and when I saw the guy on Designing Women do that -- return something he had borrowed and then -- sit on it. -- Really??! There, it was like a double-offense -- sitting on an end table, and sitting on top of the thing you borrowed and just brought back.
In my world view, end tables are for lamps, magazines, maybe books and perhaps small decorative items. Coffee tables, pretty much the same, except not lamps.
Sitting on end tables -- is this some kind of anthropological development that occurred during the 1980s? Is it Hollywood? When they're filming a TV show they just sit somewhere and don't bother about whether it's realistic?
(how much Puzzle Power does my brain have left...?)
-30-
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