I frowned and kicked it out into the hallway, trying to think of a hipster who might like it."
One year ago I bought a huge inflatable ball marketed as a desk chair.
You know the kind. They’re supposed to keep your muscles and mind busy while you pour your soul into a computer.
I hated my own chair at the time, sought to replace it, and thought, “Hey, I’m fidgety. Why not scoot around on an upholstered sphere all day?”
See, the old desk chair is an original Star Trek prop, I’m sure of it.
But in my hatred for the alien throne, I forgot (or never had the commonsense) to measure my desk’s height. So the ball arrived three inches too high.
I frowned and kicked it out into the hallway, trying to think of a hipster who might like it.
I have this weird aversion to returning merchandise, you see. I always feel like I’m imposing on somebody. It’s awkward. I don’t get it.
Then the boys came home from school.
“Wooh, a giant soccer ball!” gushed the little, feisty twin.
I stammered: “A-a-actually, it’s a – “
POW!
Little-Feisty kicked my new desk chair down the hallway.
The big, sweet twin returned the kick. Middleborn came in for the corner shot and… knocked over a lamp.
Everybody froze.
Slow shaggy noggins swiveled toward me, their eyes paralyzed in open sockets.
I was speechless, and not in a good way.
“Get… Ow…”
Big-Sweet finished the sentence for me. “OUTSIDE!” he called.
The boys rambled outside like wayward (cocaine-addicted) chimps.
Two months after that, my mom asked if anyone had an office chair to donate.
“Ooh! Me!” I blared into the Fam Squad group text.
Little did I know, Mom was hauling donated goods to Casper the next morning, and leaving at the crack of 10 a.m. I didn’t catch her in time.
I was stuck with my grey destructo-sphere: chic desk chair turned hurtling asteroid.
The boys quarreled over it. Sat on it. Bowled it into LEGO creations that had outlived their glory days.
They balanced on it belly-down, claimed to be Superman and rolled toward my searing-hot woodstove – halting just close enough to give me a heart attack.
“I don’t know if there’s emergency burn care in this county!” I bellowed.
“Then life-flight us!” Middleborn giggled.
In the outer stretches of our solar system, soundwaves from my thundering heart still pulse against the cosmic fabric.
Then came Saturday.
Nothing beats a Saturday in November. A day off, a long run, a silver midmorning. Woodsmoke, coffee, the cheeky humor of GK Chesterton; green chili for dinner and a sure appearance of the Capella star system at dusk.
I’d trade a week in June for one November Saturday.
“Mom,” began Little-Feisty, his face flushed from pancake griddle heatwaves. “Can we PLEASE go to the park and play giant soccer?”
I furrowed my brow. “Giant soccer?”
“With that ball you bought us.”
“Oh,” said I. The boys still think I bought them a giant ball on purpose, so they could smash all the furniture and give me grey hairs.
“We’ve been waiting for 12 years,” sighed Little-Feisty, who was in the womb 11 years ago.
I had a thought, and I brightened.
We could take the desk chair to the park and kick the crap out of it until it popped, then chuck it in the dumpster on our way home.
“Yes!” I said. And we went.
We played three scrimmages. The boys battled for my desk chair, and when all looked lost, one of them would collapse onto it and roll away, chortling.
Middleborn got penalized for whacking the chair with his hands 11 times.
Big-Sweet kicked it into his twin’s face, knocked him over, rolled the desk chair over that same twin, bobbled to his feet and ran away for the goal.
Middleborn cried foul when the upholstery zipper scratched his face. That was worth an indirect penalty kick at LEAST, he reasoned.
At one point the thing soared toward my face, and I thought, “This is how it ends. Flattened by airborne office furniture.”
But then I kicked it as hard as I could, unleashing a year of pent-up socially-awkward terror of returning things to stores. That felt great.
The desk chair didn’t pop. Now back home, it’s glowering at me from the hallway.
But it’s shrinking. Maybe by next Saturday, it’ll be nothing but a frisbee disk for us to throw at each other’s faces.
Feeling satisfied after the game, I took myself to the big-box store. I spotted a grey ottoman with upholstered buttons and internal storage space, and I thought, “Wow, that would make a cute desk chair.”
Once again, I’d forgotten to measure my desk’s height.
“It’s all right,” I told myself. “I’ll just eyeball it.”
