It’s weird, the kind of objects that we lug around with us, the stuff that we get attached to.
In this move, I’ve dumped about three-quarters of my stuff. Most of it is no great loss – old, cheap junk, bought a decade ago and always intended to be temporary, simply not worth the cost of shipping across the country. Some items ended up in the hands of my parents, still others are sitting in a local storage unit until Kristi and I can afford to ship it. A bunch of other stuff is currently in UPS transit, scheduled to arrive the same day that I do.
And then there’s the chair.
It’s not a comfortable chair, not at all. I sort of adopted it about fifteen years ago when I lived in a little rented studio apartment, not much more than a rented room in the home of a watercolor artist living in Maitland (an Orlando suburb). She was.. unique. She was in her early sixties at the time, a bit of a snob, could always be expected to say random things that make you go, “huh” and quickly change the subject. That was B.
I also learned fairly quickly that B, for whatever reasons of her own, was very concerned that people with high skin melanin might move into her neighborhood.
Anyway, the “apartment” had been sparsely furnished with Goodwill specials, including a small student writing desk and this chair, both painted in the same godawful shade of pale sickly orange. When I first moved in and she showed me around, she pointed out the desk and said:
“Oh, I love that desk and chair.. they’re such a nice [*racial epithet*] color.”
Err.. oo-kay.. Moving on.
When I finally moved out, several years later, I left the desk but took the chair with me. It’s a good chair, very sturdy. Not comfortable at all, but an excellent standing-on chair. And now with most of my furniture either gone or going this week, I’m sitting at my current little writing desk with my laptop, sitting on the nice [*racial epithet*] colored chair.
To this day, I can’t help but think of this ugly little thing as the nice [*racial epithet*] colored chair. The line was just so stupid, so idiotically out of left field at the time, that after all these years it remains psychologically branded to this chair in my life.
It’ll get shipped with the rest of the storage unit stuff, and Kristi says we’ll repaint it. After fifteen years, the poor thing will be given back some shred of dignity. But I doubt I’ll ever look at it as anything else than the nice [*racial epithet*] colored chair.. again, it’s weird, the stuff that makes up a life.