This Fish Needs A Bicycle

love is a chair

I saw it in the window one morning and stopped walking.

I was not shopping for furniture at the time, especially not bedroom furniture. It wasn’t in the budget—not in the plan at all. But there it was, this chair. This intriguing, modern chair with curved blond wood and a mossy green wedged seat.

“Nifty,” I thought, and continued on to work.

But then there it was the next day. And the next. It couldn’t help being there in the window of that designer furniture store, and I couldn’t help but see it as I came and went from the office each day. Sometimes at lunch, I’d stop at the glass pane with a friend and ask, “What do you think about that chair?” But I never went in. I didn’t want to sit in it, to want to take it home, nor to see how much it cost. The price tags on furniture can be heart-stopping, and designer furniture often requires you promise your first-born child in return.

“It’s probably terribly uncomfortable and impractical,” I told myself

Curiosity, however, got the best of me one afternoon. I went in to the designer furniture store. I touched the curved blond wood and sat on the ergonomically correct, mossy green seat. And in a moment of Goldilocks serendipity, I found that it was indeed a very comfortable chair. I wanted it. I wanted to take it home and see it next to my bed, in the corner where the light is good for reading. I’d have to move things around, of course, but why not! For a chair like that, I could move furniture.

Though certainly not a product of a charmed life, I’d never wanted anything and not been able to have it. Not anything I really wanted badly enough. If it was of any great import, I’d work as hard as it took to get it. This chair, I thought, should be no exception.

So I saved.

Yes, a chair of that price was a silly investment and certainly impractical for someone in my position. But suddenly, I liked the idea of being a bit impractical and even began to feel quite comfortable with this newfound whimsy of mine.

“Look at me being whimsical,” I wanted to shout.

Perhaps I even started to see the price as being more of an attraction than a deterrent. It was a motivation. Thus, saving for the cost of the chair didn’t take an extraordinary amount of time. I’m awfully good at focusing my energy. Eye on the prize – that sort of thing. So one morning a month or so later, with my nest egg and a bit of hope, I went to see about the chair.

And it was not there.

I stood there for a moment, stunned. Why hadn’t noticed it was no longer in the window? How long had it been gone? Suddenly, I was desirous to slink away, to hide my nest egg, my vain offering, to hope no one had actually seen me being whimsical. And I left the store, glad that the shopkeeper didn’t know I’d gone so far as to rearrange furniture.

I thought about whatever living room it might be sitting in. It’s not helpful to indulge in such thoughts. But I did. And the nest egg seemed pithy then, and likely to be squandered on many smaller, trite items of fancy. But I tucked it away.

Then I walked back home to move my bed back into the corner where the light is good for reading.

Posted by This Fish at December 11, 2003 04:00 PM