From the Big Orange Chair

I bought a big, orange chair recently. It rocks, swivels and sometimes puts me to sleep. Every time I come home it greets me with that orange color, upstaging Sally's loud welcoming barks. I think it wanted to be gold in color but just didn't make the dye lot. The best way to overcome my rather pale love of Orange, in fabric, is to just sit in the chair. Small of stature though I may be, this effectively hides most of the disagreeable color.

In the world of my parents and older ancestors, chairs designed for thinking and studying were brown, dark green or maybe a racy cordovan hue. The upholstery was often an ancestor of the loopy half of Velcro. I could easily locate and aggravate a hang nail on that stuff. If you wanted to get daring and modern, you might go with leather and lots of brass tacks. These were normally in a lawyer's or doctor's office. As a kid, I thought I'd be a lawyer, just so I could have no excuse not to have leather chairs with brass tacks. Mom was always telling me to 'get down to brass tacks'. Not a one to be found in our house, unfortunately!

A chair like this serves more than a few vital functions in my life. Just to come home and crash down into it is it's first and foremost duty. I do this when I have a lot to think about, and would prefer to digest, rather than actively think my way through things. A chair such as this could be the birthing place of great novels, brilliant screen plays, or tragic love songs. A chair such as this is just what the doctor ordered when the kidneys start kicking like an unborn child 40 years over due. It's a great place to slurp chicken soup when one is entertaining the flu. I turn my head to the west window and watch the cranes go squawking past overhead. My fingers get to stroking the soft nap of that velour upholstery. This triggers associative thoughts by the dozens. See? Thinking is not as encouraged as flow-charting the endless waters of the mind in a chair like this. Perhaps that's the reason for horsehair, loopy victorian fabric and leather in the Thinking Chairs of old?

Yesterday, I woke to the kicking of the kidneys, and resigned my self to The Chair for The Day. Yes, the whole day and night! I watched every episode of Stargate Atlantis on the computer. The chair became my Command Seat in the Shuttle Craft. The chair became my hideout from the Hybrid Zombies created by Micheal the bad guy from the Pegasus Galaxy. The chair became my sanctuary from thinking in general. Every time I had to get up it waited, faithful as a dog, for my return. The seat was still warm. It does not creak complaints. It knows when I need cuddling. It knows when I need to cry. It, better than any other, knows all of my favorite foods and doesn't mind wearing them from time to time. At the end of that day, I could have sworn I heard it sigh quietly, as I got myself up to go to bed.

Could I have finally found my perfect relationship?

It is most fortunate that The Chair lets me know when it's time to do things, like go to bed. When it's time to write about stuff, I have to sit in this ugly wobbly old office chair on stuck wheels. I suffer the lumps in the seat and the unadjustable backrest banging on the kidneys willingly, like one who loaths being at an office cubicle all day, because I know who is waiting for me to return and make it all feel better again.