I paid eight dollars for a chair at 9:17 on a Saturday morning. By 9:24, I had learned that it did not fit in my car.
Neither fact would be especially interesting if I'd left the house intending to buy furniture. I hadn't. I was supposed to get eggs, drop off a package, and be home before the washing machine finished. Then I saw a cardboard sign taped to a stop sign: GARAGE SALE. TWO STREETS OVER. The arrow was drawn in what looked like red lipstick.
I followed it. Obviously.
The sale was mostly the usual stuff: a bread maker without its manual, a bin of Christmas decorations in May, three lonely mugs, and enough extension cords to power a small airport. The chair was near the end of the driveway, partly hidden behind a fake ficus.
It was wooden, with wide arms and a faded green seat. Someone had once taken the trouble to paint the legs yellow. Not carefully, but enthusiastically. I liked it immediately, which should have been my first warning.
“How much for the chair?” I asked.
“Eight,” said the woman behind the folding table. She was eating toast out of a paper towel.
“Is anything wrong with it?”
“It squeaks.” She gave it a push with her shoe. It squeaked. “My husband says that adds character.”
I sat down. It held my weight. In the world of garage-sale furniture, I considered this sufficient testing.
I handed over the cash and carried my new purchase to the curb. I drive a perfectly normal four-door sedan, which suddenly seemed designed by people who had never seen a chair. The seat went through the back door. One arm didn't. I tried the other side. Same problem, different angle. I folded down a seat, pushed forward the front passenger seat, and briefly considered whether the chair could ride shotgun.
The woman from the sale watched from her driveway without offering suggestions. Fair enough. I had made a business decision; she had completed a sale.
After seven minutes, I shut the car door and stood next to the chair. My sunglasses had slid halfway down my nose. I pushed them up with my wrist because both hands were dusty.
I lived about four blocks away. Four blocks isn't far until you're carrying something made of solid wood with exactly zero convenient places to grip it.
I called my sister.
“Are you busy?” I asked.
“Why?”
“I bought a chair.”
There was a pause. “Another chair?”
This was unfair. The last chair had been a stool, and that was nearly a year ago.
“Can you bring your car?”
“What kind of chair?”
“A normal one.”
“Then why can't you put it in your normal car?”
I told her I'd figure it out and hung up before she could make any more valid points.
I carried it home.
Not gracefully. Every half block I set it down and pretended to check my phone. At one intersection, a man walking a terrier stepped aside to let me pass. The dog barked at the chair. I understood its concern.
By the time I reached my front door, I was sweaty, irritated, and weirdly proud. I put the chair in the corner of the living room where I had imagined it would go.
It was too wide.
Only by a couple of inches, but enough to block the bottom drawer of the little cabinet beside it. I moved the cabinet. The lamp cord no longer reached the outlet. I moved the lamp. Now the entire corner looked as though I had rearranged it during a minor argument.
I texted my sister a picture.
She replied: Did you carry that thing home?
Me: Yes.
Her: Incredible use of a Saturday.
For the rest of the afternoon, the chair sat in the middle of the room while I decided what to do with it. I never got the eggs. The package spent another weekend in my car. At around six, my cat climbed into the green seat, turned around twice, and fell asleep.
She's been there most evenings since.
I'm not saying the chair was a good purchase. I'm saying I have been informed, by the only member of this household whose opinion appears to matter, that we are keeping it.