My wife has good taste when it comes to appointing our home. The furniture matches; our walls are adorned with family photos; knickknack shelves have just the right amount of knicks and knacks. So why she insists on continuing to display the one item in our home that makes no decorative sense is baffling to me. It’s on our kitchen table. In fact, it takes up a substantial portion of it. I had to move it before sitting down to my laptop to write this. I’m looking at it right now.

It is a great big bowl of balls.

 Now, I almost get the bowl part. We eat cereal out of bowls, and soup, and it’s on our kitchen table. I kinda see a connection. But the balls? No. One is made of woven reed; two others, woven twigs. One has a bell in it, like a cat toy…it might be a cat toy. Another seems to be a large wad of dried moss, and still another appears covered in scales made of almond shavings. One I think is some kind of ocean sponge creature, or creatures. The whole ensemble is weighted down with a single heavy ball of polished granite.  There isn’t one that you could throw, hit or bounce. 

They’re ornamental only. They’re useless.  

Now, I’m no Frank Lloyd Webber or Wright or whatever his name was; home design is not my forte: When Vickie met me years ago, the sole artistic statement in my studio apartment was an old Nike poster of early-’80s basketball star Darryl Dawkins sitting on a throne above the words “Chocolate Thunder.” My couch looked like it was made from the kilt of a color-blind Scotsman and my living room lamp was a bare bulb at the end of a brass stick. Vickie taught me useful interior décor tips like, posters are better left in your college dorm room, couch patterns shouldn’t remind you of an explosion at a ribbon factory, and lamps should have shades. But even I know there is no point to a bowl of balls—figuratively or literally.

More than anything, the ball bowl is just in the way. The kitchen table is not only a place to eat, it’s a place to study, write or browse the Internet. I don’t believe it was ever meant as a place to sit and contemplate a bowl of random balls. Also, what to do with the ball bowl when we do sit down to eat, study or surf the web? The bowl itself is the size of one of those Chinese sun hats, only upsidedown. The only space large enough for it besides the kitchen table is the pool table. But the pool table already has a purpose—it’s where our laundry goes. The last time it was actually used for playing pool was 2011. So usually the bowl just gets shoved back and forth from one side to another, like the sole piece to an odd, unwinnable board game.

I wish I had the courage to state to my wife that, you know what, the bowl of decorative spheres has reached the end of its usefulness in our house—we’ve gotten our money’s worth, dear, but it’s time to move on. However, that would require a couple spheres of my own, and those have been in my wife’s purse for the last 25 years. So, this bowl and I will continue to co-exist. I’ll move it when I need to, ignore it when I don’t, and when it’s really bugging me, maybe I’ll distract myself by finally putting away the laundry and shooting a game of pool. 

Catch Tom on the Pat and Tom Morning Show on New Country 105.1, email him at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter @kncitom. Illustration by David Norby © Style Media Group.