Point of View: A Plush Seat to Hold On To
Well, it is true. I am a liberal and I sleep in. But so did my father, who was a Vermont Republican. As in politics, so in dress. I still have his black linen tie, which he often wore with a white shirt and a dark jacket, to such an extent that a woman once said he “shrieked of conservatism.”
He was also very funny. Yes, the two can go together, though I agree that liberals, less concerned with original sin and all that, tend to be funnier.
I mean, life is pretty absurd when you think about it, so why not laugh.
“Let No One Untrained in Absurdity Enter Here” is over my portal. And now, to complete the picture, I have a chair fitting my rank and years of service to swivel in. I saw the high-backed, leather (wait, let me smell), yes, leather throne downstairs yesterday. Affixed to it was a yellow Post-it with the name “Russell.”
And so I asked him. “Russell, is that your chair? If so, it’s a fitting reward for all your years of service.”
“It’s yours if you want it,” he said, acknowledging that when it came to hoariness and force of habit, I had him beat.
We trundled it upstairs and squeezed it through the doorway and set it down. I, in turn, took the low-slung, sprung ripped ersatz leather thing I’d sat on for God knows how long downstairs and, with some sheepiness, put it where the regal one had been.
I’ve just gone down to see if anyone happening to plop on it might risk injury and found that the back is now well adjusted and offers more support than I once thought it did.
“Buyer’s remorse?” Russell asked.
“No, no,” I said, “it’s just that I’m having trouble keeping up with all his change.”
“Here today, gone tomorrow. . . .”
“Or the day after tomorrow. . . . The inauguration, you know. . . .”
And of course that reminded me of the film by the same name that Mary and I had watched during the recent all-night snowfall. Disasters can lighten your mood, I remember thinking at the time. At least fictive ones.
As for the non-fictive kind, one of which appears to be looming, at least I’ve got a plush seat to hold on to.