My Rescue from the Recliner on the Street Corner One Fine Evening in May
At first, it was pleasant sitting there in the recliner on the corner with the street lights coming on and a slight breeze, as cars drove by . . .
I used to think my middle sister was making herself look dumb for telling stories about ridiculous scrapes she got into. Now I realize that's a Boston kind of humor . . .I grew up around Boston. I live in San José, California now. I got reminded of the Boston kind of humor that consists in telling stories about your mistakes, when at a mini family reunion dinner at an Italian restaurant in Worcester (45 miles from Boston) a few Saturdays ago, my sister Martha, my nieces Eowyn and Susan (all of whom live in the Boston area) and I vied to tell the most ridiculous way we’d gotten lost. For example, Eowyn and I remembered one time I was driving with her, and she had a maps program built into her Prius’s console, a Garlin standalone device, and Google Maps on her cell phone, all three devices voicing directions, and we still couldn’t find the place we wanted to get to.
Before anyone else gets to tell the following ridiculous story on me, I'll tell it on myself.
It started three years ago when I thought that if I got a recliner, I could put it at my desk in my office and use it for a desk chair and then recline if I wanted to watch movies on my large screen iMac. The physical therapists that were helping me with knee pain at the time told me to keep my feet up a lot.
My only TV I mostly keep hidden in a vintage-looking cabinet in the living room is a small one so old it has both a videotape and a CD player built-in, but no streaming capability, and if I try to watch a video on it, I can’t elevate my legs when I’m sitting on the couch. So I began checking out Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. I responded to one ad and asked for measurements. The owner, Nancy, was so helpful she even shot photos of how to maneuver the recliner through doorways. But then I decided against it, afraid it was too big, and there was too much else pressing to deal with then, even though I felt a bit guilty because she told me her family was amazed she was doing all that since she's in her 60s, and she'd already gone to a lot of trouble.
Nancy texted me again the next day. They had to get rid of the chair before they’d be moving to Jackson, in the gold country, in a few days, and she'd come down in the price. I made an appointment to go to her house and look at it the next day, but I canceled that morning because I had a bad feeling again. She texted back again and said she understood but I could still have it for $15. After numerous phone calls and texts, I made arrangements that Nancy and her husband would deliver it, and because I didn't want to make the 60ish couple bring it up the five front stairs, I asked our obliging friends Simon and Louise Gordon and their son Dexter to come down from Fremont and bring it into the house for me.
After the sellers dropped off the recliner at the foot of the front steps, I gave them $20, and they left with my good wishes for their new home. Unfortunately, as it turned out—after the Gordons arrived and put the very attractive chair in my office and I tried it out—the seat was much too low for me to be able to type on my keyboard. The worst thing, the deal breaker, was that I couldn't get up out of the chair unaided once I was in it.
Oh, dear. So I made a FREE sign, the Gordons put it on the chair and carried it out to the nearby corner of 17th and Washington, and I got on my iMac and started advertising the chair as a giveaway on FB Marketplace and Craigslist. Suddenly, I got a text from Nancy, the person who had given me the chair. She wanted it back! A neighbor had seen them moving it into their van when they were bringing it to me, and she wanted it. When Nancy saw my giveaway post, she wanted to come take it back to give to their neighbor.
I thought, okay, I'll take the sign off it, and I blithely walked out to the corner without my phone. What's even better I then thought, I'll sit in the chair until they get here in 20 minutes, so no one else will take it. Immediately upon sitting on the chair, of course, I recalled the reason why I wasn't keeping it. I was stuck because I couldn't get up.
At first, it was pleasant sitting there with the street lights coming on and a slight breeze, and I started saying the rosary on my fingers. But I gradually became more and more aware of what a ridiculous sight I probably was, rocking in a recliner on a street corner in the growing dusk as cars drove by. A young woman walking a dog looked embarrassed when I said hello to her.
A skinny forty-ish man wearing a COVID mask, who had many tattoos showing on his arms below the sleeves of his white tee shirt, walked by me and said, "Young lady, you look comfortable." I said, "Thanks." I hate it when people call me young lady. I started explaining what I was doing sitting on the corner in a recliner, but he kept walking. He said, “You're beautiful.” Before he got out of earshot, I said, "I could use your help." He then said something about how he'd be back. I think he went to the corner store at the other end of my block.
I'd forgotten about him, and I'd gotten to the Wedding at Cana mystery on my rosary when he walked by me again in the other direction carrying something, maybe a bottle in a brown paper bag, but I couldn't quite be sure in the growing darkness, again saying he'd come back. It got darker and darker and a bit chillier, and after a few more futile attempts on my part to get up, he finally did come back. He called me young lady a few more times, assured me he didn't have coronavirus, said that he is a gentleman, that his mother raised him right, and that he always keeps his word, while he gave me the hand I needed to get out of the chair and obligingly dragged it back to my front yard. The sellers pulled up a few minutes later with their daughter and loaded the chair again into their van, and we all had a good laugh when I told them how I'd been stuck out there on the corner ever since she'd called me, and had only gotten up again with the help of that guy with the tattoos. They gave me back my $20. I went back in the house and canceled my FREE recliner postings.
The End.
Update: The Gordons later helped me get another free recliner advertised on FB Marketplace that has a remote. I wouldn’t be stuck reclining with the new chair since the remote works so well I practically get ejected from the chair when I use it. We put the new chair in my office, where I planned to move it into viewing range of my 27” iMac screen when I want to watch a streaming movie. But I haven’t used it for at least a year now. Too busy writing to watch movies these days. Also—doing a lot more galivanting. And I’m getting out of chairs a lot easier now too.
Today is Sunday, July 9. Usually, when I'm home, I attend the 11:15 traditional Latin Mass at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory in San José, but Chrystal, the friend who usually gives me a ride, wanted to go earlier so she could help her brother-in-law bring her nieces to an amusement park while her sister recovers from a minor medical procedure. When I was leaving the 9:30 Mass in the office space the oratory is renting while we fundraise and try to locate a permanent real church where we can worship God, Gail, a woman I know who lives part of the year in Connecticut and part here, was waiting outside for the 11:15 Mass to begin. She pulled me aside, and out of the blue she started smiling and said she wanted to tell me something in person, rather than write an email. I've never seen her so animated. She wanted to thank me for this story. She laughed, and we both laughed while she told me how various parts of the story had cracked her up. I needed that! she said. Send me more if you have it. That was the best review I ever got from anyone. I got to see in person the delightful enthusiasm of this woman who I never suspected read anything I ever sent her. I achieved my writerly goal. I pleased my reader. I needed that too!