The Perfect Chair Quest: A Tale of Patience, Practicality, and Primal Manliness

I need a chair. One that I can carry with one hand while holding my coffee in the other and keeping the dog away from the food on the table with my leg. But the chair needs to be comfortable—a chair that, when I finally put it in place and sit on it, keeps me from falling off the sides. Not because I'm fat, but because I'm too distracted to look at where I'm going to sit. I need to feel with my ass as I sit down where the designated sitting area begins and ends.

But why would I need to move the chair in the first place? It sounds like I'm moving it from one table to another. True, for two tables there are two chairs: dinner and romance at the dining room table, and breakfast at the kitchen table. But that damn tea—it could be here or there. It doesn't even go by schedule. It goes entirely by mood. Perhaps it's influenced by the weather. Perhaps by a menstrual cycle. Perhaps by a bank account balance or a Monday morning versus a Friday afternoon.

But yes, I need a chair. So, I ordered two beautiful chairs online. These will be permanent residents at the dining room table resort. However, there's a delay in shipping—paid, but not in stock. Should I have checked before ordering? Maybe. But then I wouldn't have ordered for another few months. So here’s the ongoing great migration of the two chairs while waiting for the reinforcements.

Some people, many people, would get just any chair. Run up to IKEA, buy two yellow plastic things that are not too wobbly, and proclaim victoriously, "We have two chairs at each table!" But not me. It has to be the perfect chair. I have to look at that picture and feel something. I have to see the charge on my card and experience some pride.

And when it finally shows up, I need to feel like it's my birthday. Unboxing, unwrapping that brown paper or bubble wrap, putting the chair together with the five or six screws—it's a ritual that satisfies my primal manliness. Then, I’ll stand there proudly, saying, "It's been eight months, but we finally found the right chair, and it's perfect. Simply perfect."