My Recliner

erlandh-Lounge-Chair-Red-800px“You promised!” my wife yelled down the stairs.

I did.

I promised to go shopping for patio furniture with her but I can’t – because I can’t get out of my recliner.  It holds me in too tight of an embrace.

It seems that every time I sit in that chair, I sink in a little deeper. Every time, the foot rest tilts me back a little further.  Every time, the cushions wrap around me a little tighter.

I fear I have crossed some threshold whereby it has become impossible to get up under my own power and I should have seen this coming.

I love the recliner and it loves me.  Although it sounds strange, it is perfectly natural for people to form such a bond with objects. We do it all the time.

Throughout our entire lives we are attracted to beautiful people and delightful things and we pay them no more than a lingering glance, until that special person or exceptional thing comes along and then it is electric.

We just know they are right for us. So it was with my recliner.

It was love at first sight.

Well… to be honest, it was infatuation at first sight. Love came later.

Over time my recliner molded itself to me. The stuffing compacted to fit my form and the springs adjusted to the way I sat.  I changed too.  My muscles learned to relax to the contour of the chair and my blood to regulate itself to achieve maximum comfort while sitting.

And it is this molding of one to another that is the essence of love.

It is how we perfect love itself and after being together for years, I can truly say that I profoundly love that chair.

My wife sees it differently.

What I claim as breaking in, she insists is breaking down.  She says I spend too much time in my old rotting recliner and I understand her jealousy.  She simply does not respect the love I hold for the chair and it holds for me.

But now it is holding me in place.

I worry about that. Sometimes relationships can become unhealthy and when love keeps you locked away from the world, it is time to reevaluate your commitment.

So at the furniture store, I explored new options.  I found a brown leather recliner with heat pads, magic fingers and a cup holder.  Plopping into it, I banished all fidelity to my old chair.

My wife however was not pleased.

She spent twenty minutes searching the store for me.

“You promised to look at patio furniture,” she reminded me.

I did.

But I couldn’t get up.

Author: Almost Iowa

www.almostiowa.com

46 thoughts on “My Recliner”

  1. Hey, can you do this blogger a favor? Can you please go into your admin page and have your “most recent” comments AT TOP… so I don’t have to scroll forever to reply? (You are just so popular). I had to scroll past 40+ responses. Just to comment. 🙂

    I found the option on my blog the other day and changed to have the most recent replies at top… not that I have as many responders as you or my dear pal Paul. But, I’m looking out for all my readers. 🙂

    Anyway, breaking in / breaking down / breaking bad / breaking wind… it’s all the same, right? An “art” of breaking.

      1. Worth a shot? I came across that option before and wondered what the purpose of it was… left as is, and forgot about it.

        The other day, I was in the admin section and thought “I understand why this option exists now” For those instances where someone has a ton of commenters.

  4. My husband has fallen completely in love with his new recliner. The good news is, I don’t have to wonder any more whether he’s in the basement, the shed or outside. Now I never have to look any farther than the living room. It makes keeping tabs on him so much easier.

  6. Classic… “Infatuation at first sight, love came later.” If you consider the intimacy involved, that recliner knows you more intimately than anyone and you didn’t have to say a vow to keep it, just swipe your credit card… Interesting relationship.

  10. Recliners, couches, or sofas, they are all the same. Men end up asleep and snoring! Loved the way you tell your recliner love story! (Smiles). Entertaining as always! Elizabeth

  11. I want that brown leather recliner with heat pads, magic fingers and a cup holder. Of course, we’d have to get two of them or we’d be fighting over it.

    1. You are so right, there ought to be a law to prevent the single sale of a recliner to a marriage couple, unless they can produce well documented evidence that they are replacing half of an old pair.

  12. My husband loves his recliner, too. As soon as he lands in it, he is asleep.

    I read much more in this story than that of a recliner. Lots of insights here into relationships…beyond that between a man and his recliner.

    Bravo to you for going without a TV. The TV was turned on minimally when my three were growing up and they are all great readers, reading well in advance of their peers.

    1. “I read much more in this story than that of a recliner. Lots of insights here into relationships…beyond that between a man and his recliner.”

      I tried to explain all of this to my wife. “Honey,” I said, “relationships are like me and my recliner.”

      And she said, “Go walk your dog, I am sewing.”

      It is why we love each other. 🙂

  14. The parallel you’ve drawn between your relationship with your chair and human relationships is spot on: particularly that bit about when it’s time to get up and go.

    But when it comes to recliners, my experience is limited. My parents never had a recliner, nor my grandparents: nor any of my relatives, now that I think about it. I don’t have one, myself. I read in a basic arm chair, and have a straight chair at the computer, and those two serve my needs. If I had a television, something more comfy for tv watching might be good, but I’d probably hunker too far down in the cushions and not be able to get out.

    1. “If I had a television”

      I went twenty years without a television. I read while listening to classical music to relax. Later, my kids grew up without a TV. They became avid readers. My daughter could read a newspaper before kindergarten (no lie).

      Then I decided to get a television – to watch the Vikings. There are poor choices in life and then there is that.

      1. I read before kindergarten, too. As for getting a television to watch the Vikings — that makes sense. It might even have made sense here, in the heyday of the Oilers. Now, we have the Texans. Never mind.

        1. I should have simply gone to a sports bar to watch football. After all, isn’t that what sports bars are for?

          But I rarely watched the full game and I would have missed the best part if I had gone to a bar. The kids and I always went out into the yard at halftime to toss the football around. We still do.

          My fondest memories of their childhood is that of a football in flight framed against the turning leaves and my kids, jostling each other as they backpedal across the lawn.

    1. How much is too much?

      When your wife tells you that you have eaten in days, slept in a bed in weeks and showered in months and your response is, “okay, okay, but let me finish watching this commercial.”

  18. So true, in life as well as chairs. My recliner holds me captive. I do all my sit down work there. I write, sew, watch tv, read the paper, meditate, eat meals, nap. If someone took it away, I would go into withdrawal. sd

  19. I was about to leave a long and probably boring comment. I’ll save that, and link back here when I turn it into a short boring blog post. Thanks for a does of humor, a bit of inspiration and a story that I completely understand.

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