The Chair We Must Bear?

So the other day I woke up, usual day, lots of cats, some dogs, coffee. A normal day. And I did the usual things, wrote, got dressed and ready for work, then walked my 30 second commute to my office and began the day.

I usually take a break about 10 am. Go out to the kitchen, let the dogs in or out, maybe walk outside in the back yard, take in the day. I also have a tendency to look out my front window. And to my surprise there was a chair sitting at the end of my drive way. A beat up, dirty, office chair that had seen better days. I went out front to examine what the fuck was going on.

Yep, there was this office chair, one of the tall ones with the impossibly high backs. And it was filthy, clearly delineating having resided outside for much of its recent life. And there in the seat of the chair, was a small kids Army plane. Which is weird because the Army isn’t known for its planes. It was just sitting there, perfectly placed, dead center in the chair.

I looked around…I mean, clearly someone placed this chair here. But how the fuck did that even happen??? I mean, chairs do not just appear in places they are not placed. But how did this happen? How did this chair come to exist at the end of my drive way between my yard and my neighbors. And yes, of course, it is next to the neighbor that hates me…I mean there is no other place in the universe an errant and wildly placed chair could possibly be erroneously placed, right?

I looked around for a cause. I mean, chairs and tiny toy airplanes do not just fall from the sky. I tried to think of plausible explanations:

Someone was moving and it fell off and just happened to land there, face up and vertical?

Someone stopped to adjust a load, had to take the chair off their truck and then just forgot to put it back on?

The Gardners dug it out of the side of the house when they were cleaning up my rental yard? (Side note, the Gardners hadn’t come yet…).

Someone maliciously placed it there to fuck with me?

We have now arrived as a society where we are wiling to expend the effort to remove things from our areas and place them in other people’s areas in order to rid ourselves of the responsibility?

The last one is the only real possible explanation. Someone just left it there to rid themselves of it. Making it now a me problem instead of a them problem.

Sure someone could be fucking with me, but really, that is the best you’ve got? A beat up old office chair and military plane? Come on, you can do better than that!

The more I thought about it (I have been obsessed since its arrival, devoting way more time and thought to it than it likely deserves) the more pissed off I got. I mean now I have to DO SOMETHING WITH IT. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to run all the way to the dump and pay to rid myself of it. I don’t want it to stay in the precarious demilitarized zone between me and the warring neighbor (although someone moved it, it wasn’t me, really, I swear, over onto the area in front of her house).

I went out the next day and it was still there. At first I thought someone had come to retrieve it because it was no longer sitting at the edge of my driveway in that neutral zone between me and HER. But no, it is still there, someone moved it so that it was now squarely in front of her house, and I swear on all that is holy it was not me who did this. So now maybe it is her problem? At least until she gets back from LA and blames me for all of this and comes after me like I have just threatened to kill her cat. (I am not looking forward to this confrontation…)

So now I am left with a choice: either dispose of the errant chair myself, taking time and money out of my life to take care of an issue that was not mine and should not be mine OR leave it where it is and see what happens (spoiler alert — I know that this will cause my neighbor to accuse, hate, scream, cuss and yell at me — and mount more fictions evidence that I am the Devil incarnate).

Kill or be killed really (metaphorically speaking of course!)

And I started thinking about the thought process of the person who just dropped this off here. And whether they know me or not, it is kind of fuckerous thing to do. I mean, dispose of unwanted property by just dumping it at some random, or some not so random house. If I was just an easy target, then that is just bizarre. And if they meant to leave it next to my house, just to piss me off and cause me to have to go to great lengths now to dispose of it, I mean that seems evil on some whole other level.

Is this where we are as a society? We can’t be bothered to take our carts back or if we do actually take them back we want a fucking metal for citizen of the week! And now we have decided, with perhaps malicious intent, to dispose of our unwanted, aged property by just randomly (or not so randomly) dropping it off at others homes in the cover of night.

I mean, it isn’t a weapon of mass destruction but this kind of thing repeated over time would surely drive someone like me insane. Dropping off errant household items that are past their useful life, and depositing them at the end of my drive way is enough to push me over the edge, truly. I am already pissed off and resentful that I now have to take the time to manhandle that fucking chair into the Jeep, drive it to Ventura, and pay for the dump to take it. When do I have time for this? And why should I have to do it??? THIS WAS NEVER MY FUCKING CHAIR! WHY AM I NOW SUDDENLY RESPONSIBLE FOR IT?

I think if I could find a way to think of some sort of benign explanation, I might be able to move past this. But I can’t. This was an intentional act by someone. Someone did this on purpose. Either they thought my house looked like a good place or they targeted me on purpose. I am not sure which scenario pisses me off and concerns me more…

So it would appear that we have arrived at a place in our society, even in this small, idyllic town in which I have chosen to live, where we care so little about others we are now content to increase their burdens by menacingly placing errant, disgusting chairs on their property so as to inconvenience them and annoy them. What if I was elderly? What if I was disabled? What if I didn’t have a truck? What if I was broke and didn’t have money to dispose of this? I mean, what the actual fuck is wrong with people today?

Whomever owned the chair has now unburdened themselves and caused me to be put out by now having to deal with it. I am not sure if the toy plane was meant as an apology or a fuck you. Its presence did dispel any notions that it accidentally fell off on its way to somewhere else. I mean the plane is placed dead fucking center, face up. No fucking accidents there.

After I stop being resentful, I will tell you that it is kind of a brilliant strategy to drive someone insane. Just keep showing up at their homes and dropping off large, unwieldly domestic items that require a truck and/or assistance to remove. I mean, it isn’t going to ruin the world in an instant, but it definitely fucks up the humdrum every day life, most especially if this was done repeatedly. Slowly driving someone like me insane.

I am not sure why this fucking chair arrived in my life, or the toy plane for that matter. The plane just makes it extra weird. I am not sure what lesson I am supposed to be getting from this whole ordeal. I just know that I am not happy about it and it feels extremely unfair. I have a hard enough time taking care of the things I actually own and disposing of them when life gets lifey. I do not need the added burden of now having to take care of someone else’s shit. Truly.

But their burden is now mine. Thanks for that.

And so I am left with this burden, a resentment and a new despondency about the world in which we live. A world where someone else feels just fine about inconveniencing me, stealing my time, my money to aid them in removing this burdensome office chair from their lives. (It does really bother me more because the chair is fucking ugly and I wouldn’t have ever owned such a piece of shit — which , yes, is a wholesale owning of my own snobbery).

We have arrived in a place in the world today where women are being threatened to become vessels over their own objection, where lies and greed and hate prevail. Where making fun of people is a sport and where kindness has all but left the building. This isn’t all of us, thank God. But it is at least half of us. And that should scare the fuck out of you.

And this whole chair fucking thing is just another example of how much we as a society are failing to care about others. We are just fine to burden strangers (or someone we know and don’t like) with dirty old chairs, in some sort of malevolent plot to drive them over the edge one household item at a time. I am not a conspiracy theorist normally, but this type of egregious lack of care and respect is pretty upsetting to me.

And yes, I know it is only a fucking chair. But that chair’s arrival has caused me untold amounts of angst, despair and consternation since its arrival. I know, I know, I could have chosen to not let it disturb me. And if that is what you think, I invite you to come over and take care of it yourself. Spend your time and money taking care of something that was not yours to deal with at all and now will take up your time, energy and resources to become untethered to it.

After you have done all of that, tell me that you do not feel resentful and pissed. And if you truly don’t, then you are a better person than I.

I do see the humor. I do. And in my better moments (which we can all just agree that this blog is not one of them) I do laugh about it, but then I go right back to being pissed off again. And I suppose I shall remain in this position, mired in this feeling until and unless I dispose of the chair and the weird toy airplane.

Please God do not let this be a recurrent thing…