Val Has Two Rollies

No, we’re not talking about layers of adipose tissue. We’re talking about Val’s rolly chairs at work. Don’t go thinkin’ the school sprung for two chairs so Val has a spare. Nope. Val used to park her keister on a hard plastic blue chair with silver metal legs. A pupil chair, without wheels. Even though those chairs are now all tricked out with shoes on their leg feet, they are not the chair of choice for a teacher.

Before the hard chair for pupils, Val had a different rolly chair, inherited from a teacher who retired. This rolly chair had a square cushion and a square back, and two arms. One summer when Val returned from her magnificent summer vacation, she went to pull that rolly chair out from under her desk on the very first workday before school started, and A WHEEL FELL OFF! Not so rolly, a rolly chair without wheels. And not so conducive to sitting, either. Good thing Val found out before plopping her rotund rumpus onto that square chair. Upon further investigation, Val discovered that her inherited teacher chair had made many a trip down the hall, down the bumpy ramp by the library, with a pupil as a passenger, in a spate of chair-races held by the pupil workforce during summer building upkeep. You’d think they could have at least left a note to be careful sitting down…

So…Val made do with that implement of torture, the hard blue plastic chair, until scuttlebutt reached her ears that the computer labs were being renovated. They were getting new rolly chairs. So the old rolly chairs were being farmed out for adoption. Uh huh. Val snagged herself TWO rolly chairs, with cushy blue cushions. Thing is, they were used chairs, and as such, had their own idiosyncrasies. One has a back that can barely be adjusted. It won’t slide posteriorly  and make a space for Val’s space-loving buttocks to hang between the seat and the back. AND its back won’t stay up, leaving a place for Val’s buttocks to squeeze, so she doesn’t have to strain her back to lead against it. Hmm…perhaps the problem is Val’s buttocks…

This rolly also has wheels that are excessively rolly. When Val arises from it, she is like Bambi on ice. Sure, the chairs were made to roll easily on the carpeted floor of the computer lab. But Val has no carpeted floor. Just cold hard industrial tile, baby! So that chair either rolls like greased lightning, or it gets its wheels sideways, and has no friction to make them spin, thus forcing Val to drag herself toward her desk like a dog dragging its bum across a carpet.

The prime rolly chair, Val’s #1, has issues of its own. Yes, it has a stand-up back, and a comfortable adjustable gap from the seat to the back. But it has grown uneven over the many years of service. Not from Val’s butt. And not so uneven that you might notice by looking. But Val can tell by sitting. Like a princess sleeping on a pea, Val KNOWS. And Val’s left hip knows.

Sitting on Chair 1 makes Val’s hip sore. She can almost see her iliofemoral ligament shaking its fist, rassenfrassen about how Val needs to get off her butt and get another chair, because Chair 1 is stretching it beyond the limits that any iliofemoral ligament should be stretched. Threatening that if this butt-to-chair continues, Val isn’t going to have a left leg to stand on.

That’s why Val switches out her rollies every day or two. Gotta keep the ol’ iliofemoral ligament happy.