The Chair...

03/19/2011

Do you recall the TV show Frazier?  Do you remember Frazier’s dad and his chair?  I am beginning to think a special “chair” becomes a part of us as we age.  It is a right of passage, I think, and I am enjoying mine.

My dad had a chair.  It sat in our living room in a corner and had a direct view of the TV.  The front of the chair was on an exact parallel to the TV screen, not more than six feet from it.  It was dad’s chair, and though we kids often sat in it during the day or after school, no one ever thought about sitting there when dad was in the house.  It was kind of like a thrown, and it was his.

I didn’t make it as a conscious decision, but I did choose, over time, this chair I am sitting in at this time as mine, just mine.  The Nancy has her own, though it took her longer to decide on it than it did me and mine. My chair is located about eighteen feet from the TV, but just like my dad’s chair it sits facing the TV almost parallel with the screen.  Our TV is a tad larger than the one my dad watched, perhaps five times the size. 

My office is in the basement of our home.  I choose to put it there in August 2009, you know, when it was warm.  Though our basement is heated, we do not keep the thermostat down there set too high.  The basement is about 3000 square feet and heating it can get a little expensive, hence a 60 degrees setting.  While I have an electric heater by my desk, it is still hard to get the space warm enough to work there comfortably, so I don’t.  I work up here in the warmth and comfort of the first floor of the house with my butt firmly panted in this chair, with my laptop resting in my lap and my cell phone on the table next to the chair.  It is everything I need to do my job, and that is the beauty of a laptop and an iPhone.

Only problem with this arrangement is the mere fact that my big ass isn’t moving around much, if at all.  I imagine if I were to count the number of hours I have sat in this chair this week it might total as many as forty or more.  My doctor would not be pleased.  Thank God, he doesn’t read my blog. 

I cannot help but wonder if this sedentary lifestyle I have assumed, though I do an hour an on the treadmill almost every day, is causing my musculature to atrophy as quickly as my medulla oblongata seems to be?  Is this having a deleterious affect on my body or on my ability to think clearly?  I find my memory ain’t what it used to be, and right now I cannot remember why the hell I started this piece in the first place.

And that is all I have to say about that…