The One Where Hick Gives Val the Electric Chair

Stop your cheering! It's not what you think!

Hick is at a loss every Christmas over what to give Val, the woman who has it all. Sometimes (once) he hits a home run. Like the year he gave me a chair for the desk in my dark basement lair. He did that again last year, a bigger chair. Not BIG, as in a gargantuan seat to hold Val's elephantine buttocks. A bigger chair. Fancier. Leather or pleather rather than cloth. With a higher back. Padded armrests. Not quite as comfortable as the old chair. But the thought counted. It sits in the lair, ready for when Val calls it to duty. Let the record show that it's a perfectly good chair. But the seat is a bit too long, coming right to the bend of Val's knee-backs. And it makes her butt sweat.

This year, Hick gifted me with a recliner. He thinks it was a surprise. He went to great lengths to conceal his activities. He might actually have pulled it off if Genius hadn't called me out of the blue, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, asking me if I'd ever thought of getting one of those chairs that help you stand up.

REEEEE!!!

That's what I call an OLD PEOPLE'S CHAIR! I had to be diplomatic about what I said. What if Genius was planning on getting me an OPC for Christmas? Probably not. I imagine they cost a bundle. So I thought maybe he and Hick and The Pony would all go together and get me one. Let the record show that I did not really want an OPC. But who am I to spoil the gift-giving karma of someone else?

"Well...I'd never really thought seriously about one. I remember seeing how your grandma used hers at the nursing home when she was in rehab. It seemed to work okay for her. I would never get one for myself. To me, it seems like the beginning of the end. Like I'm too feeble to stand myself up. What's next, laying on the couch until the fabric grows into my skin?"

Let the record show that I often have trouble standing myself up, especially from low seats, and have to stay there a few seconds to let the synovial fluid in my knees redistribute itself before I can walk. That doesn't mean I want an OPC. Genius was quite diplomatic about it.

"Okay. I was just asking. I know you have a hard time getting up."

"Yeah. But I do. And I'm fine."

So...Hick would make pointed comments about going to look for my present. Wanting The Pony to go with him. Saying he wasn't picking up my present until Christmas Eve. There were some suspicious goings-on in the basement workshop on the other side of the thin wall in my dark basement lair. Christmas morning, Hick told me not to come downstairs yet. I heard some scuffling around down there. THEN all three of the guys came back up and asked me if I wanted to go down first to open gifts. The boys ALWAYS go down first, to see their gifts and their stockings hung by the fake fireplace with nonchalance by Hick, and then lovingly filled by Val.

I told them to go first, and I would follow. They stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching ME. Not looking at the pile of gifts under the tree. I gimped my knees down the stairs and then turned to head for my old blue recliner.

"OH! A new chair! What a nice surprise!"

Yeah. Val is all about letting others have the gift of giving.

But that's not what this story is about. Hick gave me an OPC with electric controls to lift it up and let me out. The same electric controls that HEAT the seat and back, and MASSAGE the back with three different settings. I do like the chair. It doesn't lean me quite as far back as my old blue recliner. And my feet won't go up as high. But the old one doesn't have a heater or massager, and it's a BLEEP to get out of.

Sunday night, or more truthfully the wee hours of Monday morning, I was all kicked back in my OPC, heater toasting, massager humming, watching a DVR of Kate Plus 8. I know the time was 2:55 a.m., because I had ten minutes of show left, and had been hoping to go to bed at 3:00. It's no secret that Val is a night owl. I'd been playing my new computer game The Pony gave me for Christmas, and lost track of time. Long hours at New Delly make my back want that heater/massager in my OPC.

So there I was, not a care in the world, the world being my oyster, really, although I am not a fan of shellfish (who WOULD be, in Missouri), with nothing to do the next day except get Hick out of the house, basking in the joy of my forever vacation.

<DARK>

The DISH and TV and furnace went off.

<LIGHT>

The TV came back on. DISH ran its loading program. The furnace kicked on.

<DARK>

The DISH and TV and furnace went off.

<LIGHT>

The TV came back on. DISH ran its loading program. The furnace kicked on.

<DARK>

The DISH and TV and furnace went off.

<LIGHT>

The TV came back on. DISH ran its loading program. That third time, the furnace stayed off.

I didn't want to wait for the DISH programming to load. I didn't know if the DVR would work anyway. I SURE didn't want to mess something up with the remote, and no boys in the house to fix it. So I decided I would wait a minute to see how long that loading took. It always says about 5 minutes, but sometimes it's faster.

WAIT A MINUTE! The thought hit me all at once. If the power goes off and STAYS off...

MY OLD PEOPLE CHAIR WON'T WORK!

I had that thing powered down and cranked up before you could say, "44 oz Diet Coke!" What if I was all the way reclined? I would be trapped like a turtle on its back! Unable to get out of the chair. There's a table with a lamp on the right side, and a table holding the remotes and some books and junk on the left. I couldn't roll out of the chair. I couldn't fold it up with my feet and a side lever like my old blue recliner. Hick would never hear me screaming, the way he sleeps with the quilt up over his breathered head on the other end of the house.

I'm not very knowledgeable on the true meaning of irony...but I think it would be pretty ironic if the chair that Hick bought me so I could get up out of it became the instrument of my imprisonment.