Stuffed Sentiments

Wondering where to go for aggressively embroidered pillows?

May I suggest Garden Ridge?

Ahh, Garden Ridge. That industrial warehouse of home decor crap. Metal shelves brimming with buxom toilet paper ladies, rhinestoned candles, and full coats of armour. Each aisle holds weapons of more shock and awe than the last. Cases in point:

Yes, that is a female elf waitress on roller skates (order's UP!) and an exotic bird, made out of springs and rocking shades and a visor. Who would order these as merchandise? Garden Ridge. There's a reason my mom has dubbed this place Garbage Ridge.

So I should have seen the following discovery coming. There we are, my friend and I, casually perusing the bedding aisles for some cute, quirky accent pillows. After a few minutes, we stumble upon this heap.

Appears innocent enough, right? So we stroll over. And begin between to read between the stitched lines. I give you:

In case you missed those sentiments, they read as follows:

ZIP IT (cleverly written in a zipperized font. Oh, Garden Ridge! Does your wit know no bounds?)

You Say Psycho Like It's A Bad Thing (I give them credit for using the correct form of "it's")

Let's Save Time And Assume I Know Everything (We ALL know someone who we would like to give this one to. And, if you don't, congratulations! One of your very own is on its way to you as a birthday / retirement / breakup gift. Which I'm sure you totally saw coming.)

Does the Noise In My Head Bother You? (Something about the block font and the orange construction color choice makes this one especially disturbing.)

As you can see by my face, aggressive pillows make me sad. (Exaggeratedly so.) How can a pillow be so sarcastic? Their very existence is predicated upon their ability to give comfort and support, not throw shade. I half expected to find a pillow that was all bitter about being a pillow ("Oh, no. Sure. Go ahead. Sit on me. It's not like I was DOING ANYTHING." Or, possibly, "I'm ACCENT, bitch.")

For those of you with a penchant for particularly disturbing pillowed sentiments, I give you this:

I know what you're thinking. And you're wrong. You didn't misread that pillow. In case you think your eyes deceived you, here's a close-up shot:

Yes. That pillow dares to say-- nay, exclaim, "Yes, They're FAKE! My real ones tried to kill me!" That is a pillow that combines embroidery, plastic surgery, CANCER, and major 'tude. I like how the oversized glasses go with the oversized ability to offend.

Now, wait. Hold on. Before you get your panties in a twist about it, look closely. See? The chick is rocking a pink ribbon. So it's cool.

Sprinkled among this mountain of sass are some more earnest sentiments. I guess these are designed to offset the general emotional scheme, the same way designers take a living room of tans and sage greens and throw a pair of violently orange lamps into the mix. (Which always look great in a magazine photo shoot but look horrendous in a real-life living room.) It's important to have contrast.

One such accenting sentiment pillow:

At first glance,, the pillow's colors and font seem soothing. Nothing confusing or offensive about this pillow.

Then again ... um ... I'm not sure what situation this pillow is for. Is it a bereavement pillow? Does it come with a complimentary condolence card? And really, I think this pillow's swinging for the fences. I've never had a life crisis where I thought, hmm. What would my pillow say about this? Let me go check my settee...

I also found this one huddled close to the God pillow. (Safety in numbers.)

Take that, Taliban.

Then there are the pillows that pack a one-two punch:

BAM! You're about to get some sweet, sweet lovin'.

BAM! Get to stepping.

Is it me, or is the NOT TONIGHT pillow side a bit of a tease? The words say no, but that leopard print and curly font say yes. That pillow side is asking for it.

Then there are the sweet ones.

How SWEET is that? Well, sweet if the fisherman gives it to his lady love. Arrogant if said lady buys it for herself and plops it down on the Laz-E-Boy to remind the fisherman that she is a woman in her prime and all she's asking for is a night out on the town every once in awhile. Nevertheless, this one gets a thumbs up.

But this pile of pillows isn't to be trusted. One second it's heartwarming, the next it's passive aggressive. Such as this treat:

You may read that as a sweet pillow. But it all comes down to context. Yes, if it is given by child to father, then it's sweetums all the way. But couldn't it also be read as a challenge to a particularly distant father, or a pillow a single mom buys for herself to give her some lumber support as she aches from all of the emotional heavy lifting she's been having to do while her baby daddy is out gallivanting around and avoiding his responsibilities.

....

Okay, I think I've been in this aisle for too long. Plus, at this point I'm starting to smell something horrible. Like, maybe rotten eggs? Or is that just the stench of my decomposing sense of humanity and goodwill?

Ah, Garden Ridge. You never fail to disappoint.