Come in, have a seat

Recent visitors to my always-cluttered office in the McCann Center have noticed a new addition. I’m pretty excited about it. It’s a COUCH. Back in the day (waaaaay back in the day), when Phil and I shared a cramped office with the diving coach, we somehow wedged a couch into that small space. There is a long, funny story attached to how that couch got in there, but I will save that for another day. Ask me about it sometime.

Anyway, that old couch went to the dumpster when the McCann Center coaches area was renovated back around 1996. I’ve always thought it would be great to get a couch back into the office. I asked Vess if he might be able to scam me an old, beat-up couch back in Connecticut. He's always good about getting second-hand, recycled junk.

But before he could come through on it, a stroke of luck occurred. Coach Jim Parady, the fine and friendly Marist football head coach, had a blue couch in his office. One day, while walking past his office, I noticed the couch wasn’t in there. Where was it, I asked?

Oh, he said, it was too ratty and old to have recruits and their families sitting on it, so he moved it out into the hallway by the water cooler. Ha! I asked if I could wedge it into my hopelessly cluttered office, and he gave his approval. So after rearranging the garbage in my office (which now includes the remnants of my 23-year career at the Poughkeepsie Journal along with all the coaching stuff collected through the years), I was able to fit the couch into the corner underneath the cork board.

Captain Janczyk is proud of the fact that he was the first person to “swamp ass” the couch, on the first day it was in the office. This was inevitable, as the sweaty post-run shorts/pants of the guys have always “swamp-assed” the seats in my office for many generations.

Coach Chuck was so impressed by the new addition to the office that he had the brainstorm of going out and getting a couch for his office. His brand-new, big and comfy love seat was delivered on President’s Day. Janzo was quick to out that his couch was much nicer than mine. Which, of course, is true.

I think the couches are a reflection of the coaches and the offices that they are in. Mine: Old, weather-beaten, not stylish, but functional and somewhat useful. His: New, stylish and classy, worthy of attracting and impressing one and all.

So come on in and have a seat. And hey, bring some coffee too, will ya!