You might wonder where people spend most of their leisurely lifetimes. During the pandemic, Americans spent 500 hours on their couches within a 32 week span, according to the website, “Articulate.” That’s nearly 16 hours a day. Studies have found that since COVID was cleared, Americans now spend an average of 35 hours a week lounging on their longest piece of upholstery. During the colder months, many retired people get out bed, go to the couch, turn on the TV and plop down for as many as 12 hours a day.

With the advent of reclining chairs built into opposite ends of couches, any other sitting furniture in the room is often left as objects of decoration unless company comes and the couch is occupied.

Have you ever noticed that when you visit someone other than family and you’re asked to sit down, you avoid the couch as if a “Private Property - No Trespassing” sign has been hung across the cushions? You just get a feeling that this is the forbidden zone that’s reserved for the head of the family.

When I was raised, mom said, “No food in the living room!” I had to slam down my dinner and race back into the TV room to watch the rest of the baseball game. My friend’s family had plastic wrapped around their couch and plastic around their lamp shades. This was to preserve the furniture and keep it looking new for years, making me wonder why we haven’t invented a titanium bubble wrap we can encase around our automobiles.

The couch king can be Dad who rules his domain and dare you not to sit there even if he isn’t a full-time occupant. When he plumps himself down, only the dog is permitted to accompany the king and lay by the king’s side.

George W. Bush thought he was a couch king, but his wife thought otherwise. He joked with Oprah Winfrey on her show in 2010, “So, I’m lying on the couch one evening and Laura walks in and I say, ‘Free at last,’ and she says, ‘You’re free all right. You’re free to do the dishes.’ So, I say, ‘You’re talking to the former president, baby,’ and she said, ‘Consider this your new domestic policy agenda.’”

Life in the horizontal is the want of all kings of their castles and yet, when a man must sleep on his couch because he is no longer permitted to share the bed with his wife, then his kingdom has officially crumbled. The next place he will move after his couch is a completely different residence and then he knows there’s no possible way he can return home to his throne.

Now, if you removed the couch from the room, what would the Couch King do? First, he’d have you banished from his kingdom. He might be so upset he’d buy himself a chaise lounge, but once his queen saw that, she’d stretch out on the chaise with a glass of wine in hand and pretend she’s Cleopatra, giving him no place of comfort to languish.

There’s a distinct difference between a couch king and a couch potato. The potato plants himself down and rots for days, weeks, and even months. If he didn’t have to eat or go to the bathroom, he’d never get up. You can tell if a couch was used by a potato when the old thing is finally put out to the curb with indentations in the worn cushions and frayed fabric on the arm rests.

American comedian Lewis Black has said his generation gets credit for being the original couch potatoes. “The thing that makes our generation the greatest is our ability to hang out. We’re spectacular at it. If you take somebody from our generation and sit them on the couch and bring them food and plumbing, they’ll sit there and talk about anything you want until the day you die.”

A couch king, on the other hand, does not lie upon his throne permanently, but when he decides to partake in its comfort, he’s entitled to indulge himself by a decree of his regal presence. As mentioned before, his absence from the horizontal throne simply means it may not be shared by anyone as long as he remains in kingdom.

Between the broken chips and a few coins found between the cushions by the couch potato, he experiences the ultimate state of being brain dead. You see a numbness crawl under his facial cheeks until it creeps into both eyes. A blank stare at the TV is an indication that all thought has vanished and a conscious coma has swept over his entire body. The potato’s sense of hearing still works, but a loud cheer after a home run coming from the TV induces zero muscle movement from his body and no blinks of the eyes from his caramelized face.

A sudden loud noise from within the room might jostle a couch king from his slouch. He could awaken with a vengeance, looking for someone or something to blame and the rule toward his minions is to steer clear of his impending rage.

Whether we be kings or a potatoes, we are immovable objects when we fall back upon our own version of paradise reducing our value to anyone else who is nearby to absolutely nothing.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com