Men and Scatter Cushions

I googled 'men and scatter cushions' today, thinking that a million blog posts would come up and there would be women all over the world with wide eyes and bewildered looks as to why men have such a hatred of these scraps of material that 'pull everything together' (that's interior design speak!).  After all - scatter cushions have single handedly taken the interior decorating world by storm.  I thought I would find funny and amusing blog posts about how their man reacts when she brings home another cushion for the collection.  Or how he carries on like a pork chop when he has to move them off the bed, in order to get into bed. Or maybe hit the blogger's jackpot and find a man who writes about scatter cushions...
 
But all I could find were links that :

• sell cushions to men,
• or men who sell cushions
• or scatter cushions with men on them,
• 'his and hers' scatter cushions (from the queen of daytime - Kerri-Anne.  what the?)
• some bizarre thing called Scatter Cushion Computing

The subject got a mention in the 10 household things men get annoyed about women - but it only came 7th on the list (below the TV remote? and bikes?) and I think 'annoyed' is an understatement.  At least in my house.

 

Actually, in the name of married bliss, I have avoided the scatter cushion trap for most of our married life.  It made a brief appearance in the early days of marriage, when he was a little more 'tolerant' and he had made the connection between happy wife and happy 'getting-laid' husband.  Now he is neither tolerant or getting laid so the scatter cushions are the target of frustration.  In the honeymoon phase, we had just a couple of little frilly cushions on the bed.  They did not have free reign over the house.  In fact I don't think the bed ever got made long enough to even place them, so they kind of permanently lived on the floor.

I guess I should have been on notice of his hatred of the SC when I would find them thrown increasingly farther from the bed (out into the hallway was one incident, into the good Sammie's bag was another).  This was the 80's and SC had yet to find their place in the interior world.  During the 90's I avoided them and the whole subject - yet I would catch morsels of his loud and (lets face it inelegant) ramblings with the boys at a BBQ or at a pub.  It seemed to always unite the lads, the common enemy, and they all had their own SC war story to tell - usually with great garawfs and slaps on the back.

I know Mr K felt nothing but pity for one mate, lets call him Under the Thumb Joe, as that was what all his mates called him, whose wife was the Imelda Marcos of Scatter Cushions.  Even us ladies thought it was a bit OTT (but I think we just were envious).  When the boys talked about him, they all fell quiet and somber, like he had died, or got cancer or something.  There was deep pity for Joe, and maybe even a tear would be shed when they thought of Joe and having to move 237 cushions off the bed everynight, or not being allowed to put his feet up on the couch in case he messed up the carefully arranged SC collection.

I also gave up the whole notion of SC love when my sons were at home.  Well trained by their father, they had little respect for the whole art form and would throw them, sit on them and fart, use them to support ramps for their cars, use them to suffocate each other when rough and tumbling.  I just put them away, sad but resigned that my home would never grace the cover of  Home Beautiful. 

But now the odds are even.  It's just him and me left in the house.  And I have a whole end of the house to decorate as I see fit.  Years and years of pent up SC love have burst forward into an addiction.  I need to go to SC anonymous and confess that I have bought 8 SC in the last month.  I am giddy and on a high, I keep wanting to buy more, breathless when I learnt target has 20% off all cushions today, seeking that perfect little square that will complete the 'look'.  I have even been practising that little flourish when you 'plump' them and then karate chop a V shaped wedge in the top. 

So, the question today is - if there is this great divide between men, women and scatter cushions, why is there no-one writing about it?  Is this the great unspoken between a man and a woman?