SOMEBODY Is Trying To Pull the Towel Over My Eyes

So...

I got a new office chair for Christmas. Yep. A new chair for my dark basement lair. Genius wheeled it out and presented it grandly after the opening of all the gifts. Then he plopped down in it. Allegedly to show me how it worked. They're complicated, you know, those office chairs. Don't want to shoot myself into the stratosphere inadvertently.

As with all things Genius, he whipped his arm around under the chair, and said, "This is how you raise and lower it, and pulling out on this makes it rock." Yeah. He's a regular magician, that Genius. I imagine he practiced that in front of the mirror to get it just right, so fast that my eye could not detect his motions.

Then everybody left me to play with their new stuff. I had to wheel my own new office chair into my own office! And I was abandoned to fend for myself. I sat in my new office chair later that evening. And discovered that because it is faux leather, and not upholstery-type-stuff like my old office chair...it made my butt sweat. So I had to get a folded towel to put on it so I could have a dry butt.

The next day, my back was killing me. It was used to the old office chair, I suppose, which slanted to the left. Sitting even did no favors for my now scoliosed spine. Also, the new office chair made me feel like I was pitching forward, ready to slip over the edge of the seat. I groped about the undercarriage for that lever to pull out and rock back. But NO! No lever I could get my mitts on would pull out. I didn't want to break my new chair. So I parked it in the corner of my dark basement lair and pulled up my old lopsided cloth model.

Then commenced a parade of family members who never graced my office over the last 365 days.

"Why aren't you sitting in your new chair?"

"What's wrong with your new chair?"

"Don't you like your new chair?"

So I explained my predicament to Hick. "I don't know, Val. I don't know how that chair works. I imagine there's a lever that lets it move back and forth." Hick sat down in it. Felt around. "I'll have to take a look at it."

"What do you mean? Don't you have the instruction booklet? If somebody could only give me the instruction booklet, I think I could figure it out."

"I don't read instruction booklets, Val."

"IS THIS A USED CHAIR? Don't you have an instruction booklet?"

"I'll fix your chair, Val."

So I took up my complaint with Genius. "Where's the instruction booklet for my new chair?"

"I don't know. Dad told me to take it out of the box in his workshop. I didn't see an instruction booklet. You know how he is."

"I know. I need my chair to tilt back."

"I SHOWED you how to do that."

"It was too fast. I can't remember." And suddenly Genius was called away by some magical text that was more important that his loving mother's new chair and old back.

The next day, Hick told me that he had fixed my chair. "I looked under your chair and figured it out. Now it's tiled back more. You can sit in it."

"How do I change it?"

"Don't you worry about that. It's too hard to show you. But I got under there and I fixed it for you."

Still, I was comfortable in my old chair, which didn't make my butt sweat, and wasn't ice cold when I sat down. Hick had moved my cushy towel somewhere. Then Genius plopped down in it last night around 10:00.

"Why are you not using your new chair?"

"I just haven't moved it back over here. Your dad says he fixed it so it leans back more. Can you tell? Is it slanted back?"

"NO! I don't know what he told you. Here's all you have to do." Genius reached his hand down to the lever that raises and lowers the chair. "Just pull out. Like this." He pulled out the whole lever about four inches, and the chair leaned back and even rocked if he wiggled his butt right. "THAT'S how you do it. I don't know what he told you, but he obviously didn't do a thing to it."

Yeah. I'm sure you all are as shocked as I was.