The Coveted Chair

When my daughter was younger, somewhere around a year old, I first saw the chair. When Hanna was a very little girl I was working full time in a nursing home, as an STNA. One of my best friends was my faithful baby sitter. Every day I would drop my girl off at her house in the morning, and come back and pick her up before supper. My route that I had chosen to travel from her house to work, took me down an alley and then a one way back road (well, that was the start of the route). Never on this short stint of the route had I ever saw another person. I saw no people in their yards or by their cars, not even on porches or in the street. I did not see people when I was going to or coming from work. But every day I passed the chair. I would like to add in that my car was beyond my means of repair, so I was driving my father’s ratty old pickup. It was an old truck, but it was a truck none the less. As you might have by now guessed, that chair would have fit very well into the back of that borrowed pickup. Five days a week, two times a day, I passed by that chair. To me it was the most amazing of creations I had yet seen. It looked as if it were made of bamboo and it had this crazy tall and curved back that always reminded me of the Egg Communications chair in Mork and Mindy. (If you have seen the show you know exactly what I mean. It was curved and formed similar to a giant scoop, and it had a comfortable sized and also creative bottom half.) I really wanted this chair. Countless times I passed that chair, and each time I did I must admit, I thought about throwing that chair into the back of the truck and heading on to work. I had never seen anyone anywhere near there, so I was fairly sure I would not be caught. But alas, I resisted the evil urge to just take what I wanted from someone who looked far better off than I. For nearly a year I passed by in that truck and finally the day went by that I first saw someone in the yard with the chair. For some strange reason I stopped. I pulled my truck to the side of the road, and told the guy in the back yard how much I loved that chair. And I even admitted that I have passed by it for nearly a year and had always wondered where it was from (I did not however tell him that I also thought of stealing it, every time that I passed by).  He came over to me and said thank you and he told me that he hated it. Well of course this was a shock to me because clearly, to me, it was a wonderful chair. And I expressed my opinion to the guy. He suddenly asked me if I would like to have the chair. Yes! My head shouted hurray, but my pocket knew that it had only loose change between empty and full. But yet with the knowledge of being broke in my head, I still ventured to ask the guy how much for the chair? It is Free said the man! Oh Lord I was a shocked woman! I asked him how could he part with it for free and he informed me that it was his girlfriends chair. And the chair had been given to her by her ex-boyfriend’s mother. (Or something like that). And for that reason alone he was willing to suffer the wrath of his woman to give met the chair. I was ecstatic and was not willing to say no. after all; to me this was a hidden force rewarding me for doing the right thing. I had always wanted to, yet I never had, stole the chair. And low and behold the chair was now mine! And the guy even walked back to his porch and picked up the chair, and put it into the back of the truck for me.

Sometimes, though not often, when we do the right thing it pays off. This time, I DID NOT KILL THE FLY. I did not do something that I regretted later, instead I did what I felt was right and still got what I want.