3rd Person Limited Narrative – Chair Shopping


Fiction / Friday, September 25th, 2009

She had wanted a new chair for some time. The chair that they had needed to be replaced; it was worn through in places and there were stains that would never come out. Plus, the old one didn’t fit with the new decor in the room and there wasn’t another other place in the house for the chair. Well, she had said to him that it didn’t fit in the new room.

“What’s wrong the chair that we have already?” he thought to himself. It fits perfectly in the spot that it is in, centered between the walls and the two end tables. Everything else fits around the chair too. The coffee table is the perfect distance away and the ottoman is the right height for the chair which had been broken in throughout the past fifteen years. There was no need for this new one.

He never understood why women always wanted new things. Why couldn’t they understand that a chair takes time to make into a comfortable chair? As far as he was concerned, the longer it is that you own a chair is directly proportional to the comfort of the chair or any seating furniture. He just hoped that she didn’t decide that the couch was wrong for the room too; it had taken years to get it to be a good place to nap.

“It’s perfect,” she said. “I love the rust colored corduroy. The grain of the wooden feet comes through just like I would want it to with that dark stain on it. Plus the color of the chair is exactly what our room needs. The room is the perfect mix of warm colors with this chair. Don’t you think? That old blue chair clashes so violently with the walls.” She wanted to add that the fabric was almost exactly the same as the pants she was wearing, which she happened to like a lot, but she knew that wouldn’t help her argument. He would accuse her of wanting it for a dumb reason.

Men have no sense of style and color coordination. All they ever care about is whether or not they can use the chair to watch the game. What he never realized was that when people had come over to watch the game with him, the house didn’t look presentable because things in the room do not match.

“It won’t fit. It’s too big,” he replied. He thought the chair looked to be fifty inches wide. He measured the other day and knew for a fact that there is only room for forty-five or less inches of chair in that spot. He would be the one who has to rearrange the entire living room. That is, if he can even find another setup that will work. The television must remain where it is because of the cable hook-up. And the lamps are limited with where they can go because they need to be near one of the two outlets in the room. He knew it wouldn’t work.

“We could make it work couldn’t we?” she asked. “We could turn the coffee table so it is facing the other way and move the end tables beneath the window and put the chairs on either side of them.”

“That wouldn’t make them end tables then, would it?”

“You know that isn’t the point. We have been all around town and looked at every chair that each of the stores had and this is the only one that would work in our room.”

He could not tell if she really wanted this chair because it would have worked well in the room or if she was tired of looking and had settled on this chair. “It won’t work though, it’s too big. Plus look at the price. We can’t afford that. The chair costs more than our television does. We would end up paying more in interest while we paid off the chair. It would set us behind on payments for other things too.”

She wanted to ask him to sit in the chair again, so he could really get a feel for its comfort but she was sure that his mind was set on not getting this one. When she had sat in the chair she had sunk into the most comfortable cushion of down stuffed corduroy that ever graced the earth. “You should sit in the chair again, it’s so comfortable.”

He thought she was being too pushy for him to have a chance of winning this argument. She had more power over him than he had over her. Was it worth getting into a fight about though? Still, when he first sat in the chair he didn’t like it, why did she think he would change his mind? He thought it was too soft. No new chair should come broken in. He wondered what would happen after he had sat in the chair for a few years. Would it become hard because the soft cushion would flatten easily? It wasn’t worth his time or money to buy this chair and find out. Plus, the fabric, the corduroy, wasn’t comfortable. It would leave ripples in his skin when he sat down. And the wear would show so easily on it because the spots that received the most pressure would be worn away; that’s how corduroy works. “Fine I will sit in it once again,” he said, giving in to her request.

“See, isn’t that soft and cushy? You can’t feel any springs from beneath.” She thought this was a big plus. Their current chair had a bad spring on the left side, making that side firmer and thus prevented the cushion from being level and when you sat on it you would be poked by it.

“Yeah, whatever. Fine, we can get the chair.” But he didn’t want to get it. He felt the lumpiness of the cushion, the ridges on the armrest and the price tag on his wallet. But he knew that if he didn’t give in, he would be sleeping on their current chair for a week.

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