Uneasy Chair

April 5th, 2008 at 08:03pm Mitch Mulhall 171

I’ve had this easy chair since about 1995.

I have no particular fondness for this chair. It’s comfortable. It’s warm. It’s proven durable. But it’s a freaking chair.

It’s leather, with low back, and an ottoman. It used to be brown, but now it’s more of a beige. It’s got two holes in it, one in the seat and one in the left arm—skier’s left, that is. My wife has wanted to replace this chair for months now. In itself, that is fine with me. What’s troubling is that my wife shared her desire to replace this piece of furniture with my mother.

You know the saying, “two heads are better than one”? This is Balderdash. Hooey. Piffle.

Part of the rub is, mom thinks my comfort should be the paramount consideration in this purchase, so she called me on her cell phone last Saturday morning and asked me to meet her at a local furniture store. I obliged, as is my way, but this visit turned into a quest to look at every easy chair in Glenwood Springs. Both my head and my butt now know more about easy chairs than I ever thought possible, information I plan to purge from my medium- and long-term memory at the first opportunity.

The other part of the rub is, when my wife says she wants to replace my easy chair, what she really means is that she has experienced a highly creative, Martha Stewart-like vision involving decidedly tasteful décor. Not just any easy chair will do. I would liken this to the scales falling off the Saul’s eyes, but my wife regularly makes Martha Stewart’s best flourish look like Minnie Pearl’s hat, and with Saul, I think his sight restoration was a one-shot deal.

Far be it from me to limit my wife’s creativity, or my mom’s concern for my comfort, but to me, an easy chair has to be one thing: wide enough for my ass. Notwithstanding the fact that my criterion for any chair is similar to what you might shop for in a toilet, I remain largely agnostic about the whole easy-chair question, which is perfect, for I understand that my input into this matter is purely tangential, and that when all is said and done, I’ll probably be blogging from my unfinished basement, sitting in my old, familiar chair, with all my imperfections…

Cheers,

Entry Filed under: Glenwood Springs, Shopping, Family, Women, United Post, Garfield County, Spirituality