The Lurking Chair
My brother Austin came up with the idea that I need to write a book, in the style of my blog, about all the crazy bullshit that I have been privy too over the years. Here is the first story from said book. Enjoy:
The Lurking Chair:
Folding chairs can be evil mother fucks. They lay in wait, like some kind of crazed bloodthirsty water mochisan, to catch an unwary passerby in their cold, malevolent jaws. In my opinion, folding chairs are the stereotypical chair equivalent of white, overweight, trailer-bound housewives. They might serve their functions as “chairs” but you never know when they are going to turn on you and try to do you in. And turn on you they will.
Even the basic design of a folding chair screams “sick, practical joke.” They are like giant venus fly traps, minus the rows of teeth and also the sweet smelling nectar to entice insects. I have never been the type of guy to go around sniffing the seats on folding chairs, or any chair for that matter, but if I did I can only imagine that it would be anything other than sweet smelling. It would, in all probability, be more like standing downwind from an outhouse. An outhouse in Houston. In July.
Unlike a trailer-bound housewife, however, folding chairs completely did a number on me TWICE (rather than once) within a two week period of time. Hell, that makes folding chairs more dangerous to man than ex-wives. On the other hand though, a folding chair has never taken anyone to court over child support…hmmm. Of course, you can empty the chamber of a Mossburg combat shotgun into a folding chair in the middle of a deserted field without too much hassle from “The Man.” I would not recommend trying that with a former spouse. Probably best not to do that with a current spouse either (even if she did not make that sandwich fast enough). Though I am no lawyer, I would suspect that it is probably best to not do that at all.
Folding chairs are another matter though. These metal fucks must die.
Looking back on the two incidents in question, I cannot be certain if it was two different folding chairs that got me or if it was the same evil bastard. This raises questions as to whether or not folding chairs are predatory pack animals that target humanity or if the offending specimen in question was deranged or just a bad seed. Probably was the same damn chair. It had a vendetta against me, I just know it. But the reasons for this hate will never be known.
The vicious attacks both took place in the same room at First Baptist Church in Levelland, Texas. Why God would allow a chair that was obviously possessed by demonic entities to dwell in his house is also a question I will never have the answers to. I probably could have gotten an explanation from the Man Upstairs after my death, but since I recorded “The Christmas Album” back in 1997, there is no doubt in the mind of anyone that I’m going straight to hell. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not ask Baby Jesus about the satanic folding chair or chairs, just get right to the roasting. The mystery will remain as such for all time.
I was in ninth grade at the time. It was the perfect age where you are just beginning to permanently scar up your body and still had quite a bit of flesh canvas remaining in which to fuck yourself up upon. Yep, those were the days. I think I had only broken one bone at that point in my life. (As of the time of this writing, I have broken 15).
After much reflection and contemplation, I am still unable to explain what actually happened the first time one of those damn chairs got me. I was sitting in Youth Group (which is where they segregate the teenagers from the rest of the church during the Wednesday night service so that they do not frighten the old, blue haired ladies) when it happened.
While still sitting in the chair, looking forward, I reached behind the back with my right hand. Why I did this, I cannot say because I cannot remember. Who remembers what stupid shit motivated them to do stuff when they were teenagers anyway? Nevertheless, I felt something odd, but not a painful sensation, and when I pulled my hand back around to look at it there was blood pouring out of my finger. The really interesting part was that I could also see the bone.
How many of you have gotten to see what your bones look like without the annoying, distracting, mind-numbing pain that normally accompanies them bursting through your flesh like the monster on Alien? It was so weird because there was no pain. It was like my finger was a Christmas gift from Aunt Zelta, “Oh wow… a phalange. Thanks Aunt Zelta!”
When things like this happen to me, I like to employ a rigid and strict set of behavior patterns designed to maximize survival and handle panic situations. I call this “The Frothy Method.” The first thing on the list when employing The Frothy Method is too look around and see if anybody noticed what happened. It is important to do this in a casual manner so that one does not draw attention to oneself. As interesting as opening your finger to the bone on a folding chair is, it is always more funny and interesting on a later date. It also helps the retelling of the story later if you can describe your reaction to the situation as a form of mild concern trumped by curiosity… as in “Hmmm… there is my bone. How fascinating.” This is much better than the companion stories of the twenty people that were there watching you scream “HOLY FUCK BALLS” at the top of your lungs as you compress the damaged hand between your thighs and hop around like a constipated kangaroo. Those people’s stories will always be better than yours.
Since I was not in total agony, my quick and calm scan of the room alerted me to the fact that my injury had gone unnoticed. This was good. I wrapped my finger up into the bottom of my T-shirt and quietly rose up and exited the room, making sure to grab the scotch tape dispenser on my way out with my still functioning hand.
Thankfully I was the only one in the mens room at the time. As I ran some water over the cut to clean it, I came to the decision that I did not want stitches. Note that I did not say that I did not need stitches. I was never a big fan of needles, particularly after the incident where Mario and I were tormented with them on a school bus in Las Cruces. I figured that I liked my bones and hated needles so there was no real need for further debate on the stitches topic. I covered my injury with paper towels and taped it down with the scotch tape, which of course did not work very well. Over the years I discovered that you just have to use duct tape for first aid.
Church was almost over so I just went outside to wait for Mom to get out. The bleeding had not stopped yet and I just felt like going home instead of answering a bunch of questions to everybody about why I was standing around dripping blood everywhere out of a horribly dressed wound on my hand. This was a Baptist church not a catholic one… so stigmata jokes would not have made much sense.
That was when I tried to come up with an answer to the inevitable “what happened” question. Indeed… what the fuck happened? There were some folks sitting behind me during the service. Perhaps I was attacked? That seemed unlikely, since they were girls. Maybe in Detroit that could have happened, but the odds of teenage girls pulling out pocket knives and slashing my fingers during church in the panhandle of Texas seemed pretty remote to me. I had never seen sharp steel edges as part of the design on the backs of folding chairs before, but it was a possibility. The following Sunday I checked the back of every chair up in the Youth Room but found nothing that could have damaged me in that way. This left only one possibility:
The bastard folding chair attacked me.
Mom was not very impressed by my insistence on being taken home since she missed choir practice, but at least she accepted my suggestion that the injury did not require stitches. Of course, looking at my finger now almost 20 years later, I still have a very visible scar from this so maybe I should have gotten the stupid stitches… oh well.
A couple of weeks went by and then the most improbable occurrence occurred. Yep… the deranged, killer chair came back for another round.
And won.
Again.
Fuck.
Unlike the first assault, this time I knew what happened. I remember chasing Vernon, the preacher’s son, around upstairs in the same stupid Youth Room, this time before the service. The reasons for this high speed foot chase can neither be remembered nor do they really matter. Boys tend to hoarse around roughly, so he could have either been holding a football, or said that my Mom raped goats with a strap-on, or something else just as lame. Point was… we were both moving as fast as humanly possible.
As we rounded the corner into the main room, a solitary folding chair was to be found directly in our path. Vernon leaped up and cleared it like a track star, without breaking stride. A nice little bit of trivia that you should know about Vernon was that he LOVED basketball and sports. He played all the time and was in pretty good athletic condition. I, on the other hand, could have at best picked out the basketball out of a lineup with other sports equipment. That was the extent of my athleticism.
Leaping a folding chair is not really a demanding physical feat. It is not like having to kill a charging lion by stabbing it in the eyeball with your dick or something insanely difficult. This is another clue that makes me confident that the chair sabotaged my attempt to sail over it.
I remember my feet leaving the ground and things were going well as most of me cleared the top of the chair with ease. That is when the evil thing also decided to jump up into the air and thwart my attempt cover it.
My mental calculations when planning my jump of the chair had not taken into account the foul entities plans to add to its height by also jumping with me. This caused my back foot to catch the top of the chair, folding the whole thing up between my legs and taking me to the ground. Somehow I managed to also fold up myself on the way down with the chair, slamming parts of the damn thing into both my chin and my balls.
No point in applying the first rule of The Frothy Method in this case because plenty of folks watched it go down. By it, I mean me and the chair. This means we move on to rule two which involves being very still and taking inventory of your body parts to see if any are missing or no longer working properly. It also involves not screaming like a bitch.
I was pretty sure I had no broken bones, so I got up and dusted myself off before limping toward the same mens room I had used two weeks ago to conduct triage. I tried to maintain the best “I meant to do that” front but most everyone was staring at me in abject horror. This is better than laughter, mind you, but then you have to deal with the nagging thought in your mind that they probably have a better grasp on what just went down than you do.
Before I go on, it is probably time to tell you about something else that was going on in our Youth Group during that time. The leader was a man named Runks, whom I still have much love and respect for. Runks would send out flyers in the mail every week to all of us that told us about important comings and goings at the church. The flyers would also include a “Mug shot of the Week” of one of the members of Youth Group. I had yet to have a mug shot taken.
When I walked into the mens room and looked at myself in the mirror my very first thought was “This has GOT to be my mug shot of the week.” I had blood pouring down my face like some kind of zombie after a meal. It explained the horrified looks on everyone’s faces. As I cleaned it off for a better look at the damage I discovered a crazy fact.
I had bitten all the way through the bottom of my lip upon impact with the floor.
It was wild. I could lift up my lip and look right through it. I remember being filled with glee at the sheer weirdness of the situation so I let some more blood run down my face before bursting from the bathroom to terrorize the other folks upstairs. We had not even lived in Texas for a year yet so nobody really knew me very well at the time. Since they were not used to my odd behavior, most folks were still unsure about me. This did not help.
While I was wandering around bleeding everywhere and taking further votes from my buddies that I was undoubtedly the contending “mug shot of the week” candidate, somebody had found my mother and briefed her on the situation.
Mom was pissed. There was no “Oh honey, what happened. Are you O.K.” or “Oh my goodness, it will be fine baby, we will get you fixed up.” Nope. What I got from Mom was a very angrily worded “This is the second time in a couple of weeks that you pull me out of church because you can’t stop hurting yourself. What is wrong with you?” Mom has never cussed in her life that I ever heard, but her tone when speaking this sentence had more “Fuck the Fuck Off you Fucks” implied in it than most sailors could manage to pull off. I was impressed.
She whisked me off away from the church to the ER because there was no getting out of stitches this time around. I ended up getting them in my lip and my chin, so I got to be called “Scarface” at junior high for a while until they came out. I still have both scars today.
My biggest regret is that I did not get to have my mug shot of the week taken at that time. I finally did get one done, but it was just me about to fall of Vernon’s roof and it was staged. Oh well… you can’t have it all.
The folding chairs never came after me again, but I am very wary about their deceitful tricks nowadays. In fact, to this very day I still watch over my shoulder anytime I find myself at Mom’s church, just in case there might be one lurking in the shadows… waiting.
They will be waiting a long time now. I am older and wiser in the ways of folding chairs and I will not be led to ruin.
Frothtonomy 