Sitting

Andy Kauffman used to do a comedy routine where he would talk about being really, really poor. His family took pride in the fact that they didn't have much, but they did have - a chair. "And then later", he'd say, "we got to go inside, and that was pretty good. Inside, and a chair too, imagine!"

We have four people living in this house, and we have a mess of chairs -- three at the kitchen table, four at the dining room table, two extras in the dining room, one in our bedroom, two in the spare bedroom (one of which is a repository for clothes to be mended), two in the den (one rocker, one pull-out couch), two in my mother's living room, plus a couch, and one in her bedroom. Plus three canvas-back fold out chairs that usually are in a hall closet. And this is just for four people.

I've been in two wealthy people's homes -- one, a local resident, and the other, my wife's uncle. Both of those had chairs all over the place, frequently arranged in artistic groupings, as if you'd be walking along with two or three other people and suddenly get the urge to just sit. In commercial settings, there's nothing so mind-numbing to me as the sight of a ballroom full of chairs that's set up for a presentation or conference. Where do they keep all those chairs, normally, I wonder. I think of some mammoth Cave of Abandoned Chairs, somewhere under the building.

Life will be different when we're genetically modified so that we can 'lock' ourselves into a stable position, and not need chairs any more, I think. Or when holographic load-bearing chairs are invented.

Until then - have a seat. Take a load off.