THE CHAIRS

A Crazy True Personal Story

Photo by Umar Al Farouq on Unsplash

Don’t you dare call us hoarders! ‘Accumulators’, would be a more proper, positive and palatable label. I confess we have been, and probably still are ‘accumulators’. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t have to wriggle through aisles in our house to move from one room to another, but for some reason, it seems as though Julie and I always have had extraneous junk. How did we accumulate so much stuff? More importantly, what should we do with it all?

The other day I went to the room-with-all-kinds-of-junk-in-it and looked around. I noticed so many fascinating and totally irreplaceable items. My daughter’s skateboard, which happens to be cracked, but she can’t get rid of it because her friend made it for her. Discarded dolls. Tubes, tubs, twines and toasters. Racks, rigs and rocks. Or how about these large old wheel-less suitcases. Numerous adapters and chargers from decades-old digital devices. Countless keys…to what? Sorry-looking single socks. Paint cans of unknown origin or color. Various items that have been waiting for years to be fixed. You never know when you might need one of these dear things.

So, being the super highly evolved human being that I am, I decided to do something strategic about the situation. I conducted a deeply exhaustive reading of ‘Organization for Dummies’, and since I’m a proud self-acknowledged dummy, I was inspired to take action. Triggered by my research, I initiated a highly developed strategy; sort the stuff into four distinct categories: 1. garbage, 2. Goodwill, 3. Craigslist (or FB Marketplace) or 4. put the darn thing in another room, thereby deferring any decisive thought. Historically we usually went with number 4. I mean why waste brain power trying to make decisions about these things? But maybe that was about to change, and we could really get organized. I heard that with God, all things are possible.

With that enviable strategy in mind, I had two relatively charming chairs that fit nicely into category number 3, Craigslist. They were superfluous to any of our needs and were just sitting in our excess stuff room. How many different chairs do you need to stick your butt in, anyway. Maybe someone else’s butt would appreciate them. Adding a little cash flow would be nice too, so CL it was.

After doing some high-level comparative market research, I set the price at what I considered an extremely fair amount; $65 each. Enough that maybe, I could treat Julie to a decent dinner. After composing an enticing Madison Avenue level ad, I excitedly pushed ‘publish’. Almost immediately I started getting hits, calls started coming in. Capitalism at its finest. One lady caller said she was “very interested” and would like to come over right away, to look at them before someone else bought them. That sounded perfect, so I gave her our address, in the countryside west of Tucson.

She was on the other side of town, so I didn’t expect her for thirty minutes or so. Thirty minutes came and went. Forty minutes came. Fifty. Sixty. Finally, after around seventy minutes I get another call from her. She told me she wasn’t exactly sure where she was but that she said that she was a little bit “stuck”. After a few questions I was finally able to determine her approximate location. Normally it’s quite simple getting to our house using GPS but on the rare occasion, for some reason, it sends someone on a slightly different but incorrect route. It directs them down a different stretch of our street located a few hundred yards east, on the far side of an impassible wash (a desert term for a normally dry riverbed).

I walked down a trail to the wash where I suspected she would be. Sure enough, I spotted her car, a nice new Cadillac sedan. She did indeed take this alternate route which led down into the wash. Apparently, she chose to ignore the multiple signs that said, ‘dead end’ and ‘road ends’ but decided to drive into the deeply sanded wash. When she reached the wash, rather than take the logical step of backing up, she turned and drove further up the wash. The deeply sanded wash.

Although it should have been abundantly obvious before she ever even entered the wash, she must have finally realized she was not driving on the road any longer (I can’t remember if she was blonde or not). Then she tried another deeply logical tactic. She tried to turn around. Another big mistake. She got halfway through her little Cadillac pirouette and then got stuck perpendicular in the wash, lodged between both banks, her tires deep in the sand.

When I came upon the scene it was difficult for me not to make some derogatory comments, but because I imagine myself to be super mature, I didn’t. I was really proud of myself. It stretched my imagination to picture a more ridiculous situation. I suggested to her that maybe a tow truck would be a good idea. She replied, “I called Triple-A, but they won’t come because the car isn’t on a county-maintained road. I called a private towing company, and they wanted $500. I don’t want to pay that kind of money! Can you help me?” I looked at her. I looked at her car. Buried deep in the sand. I looked back at her without an overabundance of enthusiasm, and replied, “Ok, let me see what I can do.” I was doing everything I could to maintain my place on the nice list, averting the dreaded naughty list.

I got in the car, slip it into gear, and tried to bounce it back and forth hoping to get some traction, but it was a no-go. It just buried the tires even deeper. As I got out of her car, one of my friendly neighbors came down to help. I then came up with one of my enviable highly evolved ideas; the tires need some kind of solid surface in order to get traction. The neighbor thoughtfully brought a shovel, so we started digging behind each of the tires. We then placed rocks in the newly constructed trenches. I then put the car in reverse and attempted to back up. Fortunately, we were successful. The car moved a grand total of about 6 inches. Oh boy. I started to get a sense of how this was going to go.

We then went to the front of each tire and dug new trenches. We again placed rocks in the new trenches. I got back in and drove as far forward as I could, working at turning at the same time. It moved a grand total of around 8 inches this time. Hey! Were we making progress or what! By this time the whole neighborhood had come down and were cheering us on for each inch of progress we made (I‘m kidding about this part, although I was thinking it might make a great Olympic event). When I looked around, I could imagine the comical-looking sagauros being amused at the scene before them.

Another neighbor, who noticed our plight, brought down his tractor to see if he could help, but unfortunately with the car positioned sideways, he couldn’t do anything at this point. So, he sat quite contentedly on his tractor, enjoying the show.

All the while this is happening, from the bank of the wash, the car owner lady is alternating watching us, and getting on her cell phone. I don’t know whether the games she was playing on her phone, or watching us trying to dig her car out was the better afternoon entertainment. At least my neighbor and I made a good team. What a great chance to bond. Real men stuff.

The trench digging, rock placing, driving the car backwards and forwards, went on another couple hours. Not minutes. Hours. We finally, finally got it straightened out, in line with the direction of the wash. I’ll have to admit I was having a plethora of thoughts. “How can anyone be so stupid? Why are we doing all this work? Bless her little heart - she can’t bother herself getting dirty.” But then I cast those thoughts aside and decided to be loving, to be the hand of Jesus. Be nice. After all I’m pretty sure I’ve made a mistake or two in the past.

Although the Cadillac was finally pointed in the right direction, it was still entrenched deep in the sand and was unable to gain traction. Fortunately, the tractor neighbor, who had waited patiently on his tractor, was happy to now put his tractor to work. It looked like he was pretty excited about it. He probably hadn’t made use of his tractor for a while. He hooked a cable to the car, started up his tractor and then, a few seconds later the car was on solid ground. His work was like, thirty seconds, our work was like, two hours. But he was the hero. When he unhooked the car, he left with a big grin on his face. The Cadillac owner, seemingly reluctantly, uttered all of us dispassionate “thank you’s”.

She was finally able to get in her car and literally drive it. While I walked back up from the wash, she navigated her Caddy correctly to my house this time. I was really proud of her. Her hours long sojourn traversing across the city to view the chairs was getting close to a great and grand climax. She was finally here. Able to view my chairs. Here at Jim’s merry marketplace. Where the buyer and seller could entertain a possible happy transaction.

So, after carefully looking over the chairs she looks at me and cavalierly says, “Would you take $50 each?” “What?” I’m thinking. “Did I hear her right? She can’t be serious. Is this some kind of nightmarish dream? After all I did to rescue her car. She wants a discount on an already low price. I was asking $65. How can this day get any stranger? Sure, I’ll take $50 but I want $500 for pulling your car out. But then I came to a another highly evolved idea, I need to get rid of this woman and I want to get rid of the chairs. Sure, I’ll take your offer. I’ll even load them in your car. And by the way, don’t get lost.”

Such is the conclusion of my tidy tale of two chairs. Sometimes I wonder how Jesus might have handled a given situation? In this case I’m sure he would have been much more loving and compassionate to Cadillac lady than I was. I looked at her as a messed up woman who was unthankful and totally wrapped up in herself. He probably looked at her knowing she needed a loving Savior. Help me Lord to see people through Your perfect eyes of love and destiny. Help me to love people that are hard to love.

If you appreciated this story, don’t be shy about hitting the like button. I will like you if you do (actually I’ll like you even if you don’t). Have a blessed Happy New Year!!