garbage chair

        There’s this part in Transparent when the rabbi wants to do this super cool service, and she gets all these seats that you swoosh around and fill with air. I have wanted one ever since the second I first saw that. And then--what do you know--they showed up in the Aldi ad last week.
        I didn’t get one right away because I thought I would look like an asshole trying to use it. (Spoiler: I was right).  But once I get something in my head like that--wanting something stupid and unnecessary--I absolutely cannot stop thinking about it until I own it. (Ask me about my stamp collection. It’s not the collectible kind worth actual money, it’s the rubber kind that you dip in ink and just kind of put on things? I have literally a tower of them on my desk, and I have not touched them in WEEKS.)
        My choices of color were neon blue, neon green, or dull dead-inside grey.
        For $16.99, I brought my grey (obvious choice) garbage bag looking chair into my apartment, where I could not find enough room to swoosh it around to fill it up. I even tried running it down the stairs like an asshole. Still flaccid. After knocking over (inevitable) my bottle of homemade air freshener that I spray on Connor’s horrendous smelling feel after work, I got all huffy like a toddler and threw it in a pile on the living room floor.
        I would have gotten away with it too, if I hadn’t left the bag with the insanely illustrated swooshing instructions on the couch, like I WANTED Connor to find it and ridicule me (which he did).
        The next day, I wake up early (8:15), hit snooze for TWO HOURS (nearly a personal record), pack myself a chicken salad sandwich, and end up sweating my afternoon away on the beaches of Lake Erie instead of gently basking in the early morning glow of the early morning sun. The sign on the way to the beach says, in no uncertain terms, DO NOT GET IN THE WATER BECAUSE THE BACTERIA IS LIKE TOTALLY CRAZY TODAY. This warning seems unnecessary because the water is well below 60 degrees, which is basically the freezing point for human bodies like mine. I see one kid on the beach who has figured out a loophole for both problems: sitting in STAGNANT water way up the beach, which like looks like the grossest water I’ve ever seen, AND has its very own warning sign, which I am too grossed out to read.
        As I am unrolling my big stupid grey glorified garbage bag, I have sort of an epiphany: you don’t need to (and can’t) fill up the whole thing; you just have to swoosh enough air to puff up the bottom part when you roll down the top. So I’d probably been filling it correctly in my apartment after all, and just thought it looked underinflated after running it down the stairs for zero reasons.
        I’m lucky that Lake Erie is one of the windiest fucking places I’ve ever been, because it fills my garbage chair right up. I still spin it in a couple of circles for show. I kind of get it all set up and then sit on it immediately so it won’t blow away (re: windy fucking place), and I beef it, just sit on it alllll wrong. When I try to scootch my ass up, I hear a rip and wait for the whole thing to just deflate to shit. Luckily, the tear was only the outer cover because the thing is rated to hold over 400 lbs, and like not to brag, but a LOT would have had to happen without me noticing a single goddamn thing if I all of a sudden weighed over 400 lbs. 
        Because it is so underinflated, the chair is a squishy mess and completely unstable. When I reach over to take out my book--the same one I’d been reading during the NATURAL DISASTER I’d experienced two days ago (earthquake--did you know Cleveland has those?)--I just tip right the fuck over.
        I roll onto my knees saying out loud, “ouch ouch ouch,” and stand ungracefully up (on brand) to try again. This time, I let the wind just have at it, and I roll the top down, like so tight, and the chair is so much bigger this time and it’s comfortable and I am just so fucking vindicated in my $17 obsessive (not impulse) purchase.
        As soon as I am seated on it COMFORTABLY, a woman  walks by and tells me, “That chair looks comfortable!” I  am thrilled to hear this (re: vindication), but also I know this means she has seen me struggling (like an asshole) to fill it up and all the tipping over and everything. I think maybe this is her being like, don’t worry girl, we’ve all been there. And so I say, “IT IS comfortable! I’m still kind of figuring out how to use it though.”
        And she says, “Oh, it must have been  tough walking it all the way down here.” And that is when I realize she didn’t see my struggle and now doesn’t understand how I wasn’t able to figure out a CHAIR the end.

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