This weekend I went to the Cost Plus World Market. It’s a Pier 1 type of a store with some interesting foods and drinks from around the world, along with the furniture and knick-knacks.
The store had a stack of papasan chairs & cushions that practically reached the ceiling. It made my blood curdle, because I have never desired to build a freaking nest. Seriously, if you have one of these chairs I will not shun you and put your address on a mailing list for information on bed-wetting or scientology. That is your choice, you can like them if you want, just don’t put the thing in your living room. The chair works great in a bedroom, to pile crap in, or as cozy nest for your cat or dog. Hell, it’s a comfortable chair to sit in, relax and read a book.
However, you can’t have it in a social situation, you can’t expect someone to sit in it and have a conversation. The chair sucks them into their own world, outside the room, space and time. To have a conversation, I need to be sitting up and participating, not in the crab walk position. Once you are in the chair, you can’t talk to or hear anyone, all you see is the side of the cushion. You can try to ball yourself up in it and contort your body to try and participate, but the deep, cushiony hell folds you up into the land of papasan. I mean the chair is better suited for a gynecologist’s exam, lose the stirrups and just put some hydraulics on a papasan and cut a hole in the cushion. You probably wouldn’t feel so strange having someone examine your cave of wonder because you couldn’t see Aladdin underneath you, and you’d be off in the magical cushion land of papasan.
Truly, if I want to be social, I can’t even pull the lever and recline in a lazy-boy. Once the chair reclines, all most people can do is mumble yes, no, or huh as the lazy-boy carries you to sleepy land. Of course, I also don’t like the papasan because it is made of wicker, which no matter what, looks like it is from the seventies. Wicker is so low rent, it is the poor man’s bamboo. If you want your furniture to say, “I just went on a safari and I got bored hunting wild game, so I made myself a chair,” get some bamboo. I am not truly advocating the use of bamboo, but if I have to sit in it, I trust the bamboo.
The bamboo furniture that I have sat in is courteous enough not to announce to the room, “Hey, I think this guy swallowed an A-1 tank, somebody please switch chairs with Jumbo before he kills me!” Wicker is all about the creaking and the other terrifying noises that make even an average build person blush as they turn their head while sitting in the chair. Which made me think of the comedian, Ralphie May. I’ll let him finish this papasan rant out on a funny note.
Remember kids, wicker is evil.
