Ethan Allen Etiquette

Currently, in the area of furniture, we own an ugly brown couch, a mattress, a few cheap put together bookshelves and a desk from Walmart. So, as part of our preparation for moving into our new house in December, we've been doing a lot of furniture shopping. We've been to several furniture stores in the area, as well as one down in Mississippi and Selmer, TN (by the way - it's definitely NOT "worth the drive" - that's their logo), and we pretty much know what furniture we are going to get.

My specialty - design and quality. Paul's specialty - leather and making sure the furniture doesn't wobble or shake. The first thing he does to ANY piece of furniture we see is shake it.

Yesterday we decided to check out Ethan Allen. Mostly just to look because we knew beforehand that the furniture there was in the area of ridiculous when it came to price. We knew we were in smug city when we drove up to the building. Along the side of the building were parked a plethora of white and silver BMW's, Audi's, Honda's and Lexus cars. Our dirty green Saturn didn't quite mesh.

This place really had some nice looking stuff. It's hard not to think everything there is beautiful because it really is. I don't know what it is about places like that though... they seem to bring out the smugginess in us all. Upon entering the store we were greeted by Patty, a professional design consultant extraordinaire with an unusually soft, yet stearn voice...

"Welcome to Ethan Allen! I am Patty. It would bring me great, immense pleasure to help you make your home what you want it to be. It's my life's work to help couples and families, like yourselves, design a home that really displays their personalities and dreams."

"Thank you Patty" - I responded. "Right now we're just going to look around but we will let you know if we need anything."

As we proceeded to stroll through the store, and as Patty watched us, we saw some really awesome stuff. Not just furniture but accessories... like a miniature glass globe for only $45.00. Oh and that vase with fake flowers for only $238.00. My dream couch - only $2,500.00. Yeah, I know.... pocket change.

I suddenly noticed myself saying things like...
"This table is exquisite"
-or-
"This would look amazing on the mantle, wouldn't it darling?"

My pinky... I just got the most uncontrollable urge to lift my pinky in the air.

When we finally THOUGHT we were alone, we sat on a $5,000.00 couch and started whispering about how I could stitch the design on the $500 pillows over there myself. Or Paul could weld or glue together some metal rings to look exactly like that $300.00 lamp.

It was settled. We could get some great ideas from this place, but never actually buy anything. As we stood up and headed toward the front we ran smack into Patty. She had just been right around the corner the whole time, not more than 10 feet from where we had been sitting... and whispering.

Did she hear us??!! I felt so violated... and then Patty said,
"Oh, I forgot to mention we have microphones hidden in all of our furniture, and cameras everywhere.... we heard everything you said"

Just kidding. She didn't say that, but I thought it. Out of slight panic that Patty would discover we didn't own a BMW, I quickly asked her for her card and she ran off to get it and a $25.00 catalogue for us to look through.

As we left Paul said, very loudly for all to hear....
"Except for those three shakey tables this place is divine. It's absolutely fabulous."

He didn't say "divine", but he did say "fabulous" and the way he said it, he should have cause it would have fit.