OK. Here’s the back story. A couple of years ago, I walked into the living room one Sunday morning, and noticed one of the big pillows my wife and I use to sit on the floor while we watch TV, was out of its usual storage place under the sofa. I turned to kick it back under the sofa, and as I did, I twisted my knee.

I have very bad knees. A twist usually means the immediate loss of the use of my leg. This was the case, and I fell backward, landing on our glass-topped coffee table and shattering it into lots of pieces. Big noise. Big drama. All the cats came out to look. Fortunately, no significant injuries except a very swollen knee that took a few weeks to heal.

But now we have to replace the top to our table. The glass place quoted $450. We paid less for the entire table and top. So since then, we’ve been surveying antique places from time to time to see if we might find a similar table with glass.

Saturday, in the rain at the Clinton Antique Fair, I spotted a table with glass the same shape as the one I broke. I saw the glass top and was thrilled. My wife, Teresa, missed seeing the glass and saw the base underneath. She was appalled.

It’s this metal tubing that looks like it came from a swing set, bent and welded together with a bunch of metal rods, some of which have flower tops on them. Some are just bare metal rods that were apparently left that way so it would be easier to poke your eye out.

Little rubber suction cups cushion the glass against the metal. At least two of them do; the others are gone.

We both agreed it is likely the ugliest table ever created. We also speculate that it was made by Martha Stewart while she was in prison, going through Arugula withdrawal, while having to work with a welder made from a Bic lighter, using only the frame from her bunk and metal from shivs collected during attacks from other inmates.

We paid $100 for it. That saved us $350 in the replacement cost for glass. But now we still have to look it the base. It might not be worth it.

Now here’s the funny thing. As we were carrying the table down Main Street in Clinton, TN, people kept saying, “Oh, that’s a beautiful table.”

We think that either:

1. Antique people are amazingly supportive of people they think share their hobby, or
2. (More likely) There was an inside joke among all the antique circuit regulars that this is the most horrific table they’d ever seen, but they’d keep saying to everyone how much they all love it until some schmuck would buy it.

But I’ve been a schmuck many times before. I have no shame.

Anyway, we have a new glass top for our good table, and as long as we don’t hear scratching at the door tonight because of some monkey’s-paw style curse connected to this table, I think we’ll be OK.

Wayne Bowman is a copywriter who spends his days writing about technical subjects and keeps himself sane by writing posts about the absurdities of daily life on social media as a brain sorbet. He lives with two cats (Godless killing machines) and his wife, Teresa, in East Tennessee. His work is published in obscure trade journals, corporate advertising and websites, and labels on consumer products, usually without a byline. He’s OK with that.