I remember when we first met. You: a short woman who spent a lot of time at her desk. Me: a floor model, not even technically on sale, until one day, the store I lived in decided to go out of business. I’m not sure how you found out about that, but you were always up on sample sales and the like at that time, mostly looking for unique clothes — the capris with sequins down the sides, the hand-sewn pinafore that looks like it’s inside out which you still haven’t worn to this day because you think it makes you look old (Yes, off course I know about that, I’ve been in five different bedrooms with you and I see everything). But that must have been how we met, too: thanks to an ad on Craig’s List, or a Time Out listing, that read something like, “Office furniture store going out of business. Everything must go!”
You’d been spending a lot of time editing a documentary — your first, made on High-8 and DV — at a beautiful, roommate hand-me-down antique writing desk that you’d had for five years and absolutely loved, but which was ridiculously un-ergonomic. You were having terrible repetitive stress issues — not carpal tunnel, like a normal person (Ha ha, remember how you complained that you couldn’t even do that right?), but shoulder and neck. You arranged a house call with an ergonomist. Who knew those existed? But you found out about her from a friend who’d worked with her at Bloomberg, and she had an hourly rate. She looked at the desk and immediately saw that it was problematic, because the correct way to sit to avoid stress was all about being at the right height, where your feet could rest comfortably on the floor with your legs bent to 90 degrees while also having your elbows bent at 90 degrees when your hands were on the keyboard or mouse. So you finally decided to get rid of that heavy oak beast — Again, thank God for Craig’s List!— and build an office set-up that fit you. Which you quickly realized was not going to be easy. Given your 5’2” proportions, the surface of the desk had to be just 25 inches high! You were able to achieve this with a couple of little IKEA file cabinets and an old table-top (another roommate hand-me-down), but then you had to find a chair that could place your little butt just 19 inches off the floor. And that wasn’t something you could just order, or find at Staples (Oh, remember Staples, are they still around? You got me so many supplies there!). No, the dirty little secret nobody had ever told you was that rolling desk chairs, at least at that time, were all designed for sizes between a five-foot-six-ish women and a six-foot-two-ish man. None of them were low enough for you.
When we met, I was in pretty good shape. Not mint condition, of course — people had been trying me out for a year or two, and my seat was a tad worn — but pretty close, all things considered. I was made out of a nubby, wear-resistant fabric commonly found in office chairs and car seats, so I had that going for me, but unlike most of them, I was a dashing shade of maroon. Still, I know it wasn’t my looks that attracted you to me — I probably saw you try every floor model in the room, don’t think I didn’t! But when you finally sat on me, I could hear the quiet, “Huh,” you made, when you felt that your feet actually touched the ground. Given how many other chairs you’d tried in vain, you naturally assumed that you were at the bottom, that that was as low as I could go. But no! It wasn’t until you pulled my lever and floated down two more whole inches, that you realized: We were meant for each other. You took me home in a taxi (the real yellow kind!) and that was the beginning of 20 years of bliss.
We teamed up for all sorts of activities. There was lots more video editing, especially once you added one and then two more screens to our little family, and those projects gave birth to a number of cute little back-up and storage drives. We also worked tirelessly on keeping your email box under control — with some of that labor moving to your smartphone once those came along, but when you realized that that device couldn’t be trusted not to make sloppy typos, you came back to using me and your laptop for all of your important correspondence. And then there was the writing. First screenplays and short stories, then grant applications and press kits for documentaries, then essays and blog posts, and even a novel! Most of them didn’t get published or read, but some did. Over time, there even seemed to be a bit of, dare I say, progress? I hope, given my constant support, that I can take just a smidge of credit for that.
And providing that support wasn’t always a picnic, I can tell you! The guy you brought home soon after me would take me into the other room when you were at work and adjust my height about a million times, up and down, up and down, as if he couldn’t decide how tall he was. There were the times, after you broke up with him, that you would take an Ambien but then get out of bed and use me to sit at your laptop and write barely intelligible but incredibly embarrassing messages to men you didn’t know on Match.com that you’d have zero memory of the next day. Believe me, even though I knew it wasn’t my job stop you, being unable to do it was torture! Then there was at least one time, I think during that same single period, when you tried to have sex on me, which luckily you realized quickly was not going to be good for anyone. And this is aside from all of the literal blood, sweat and tears you got on my arms (Why are your elbows always so clammy? Have you thought about seeing a doctor about this?); the spills and stains all over me from eating at your desk (Your skill at getting food in every possible location on both you and me is impressive, and, seriously, for what? I know you’re always trying to finish all of your different projects, but it was obvious even to me that you couldn’t taste the food you were shoving it in your mouth between keystrokes.); the scratches on my seat from hard pants, faulty zippers, uncut toenails, and that time you dropped the Exacto knife, which could have been disastrous for both of us but, luckily, was only slightly painful for me; and let’s not even talk about the flatulence. At some point, tiny nails (Why was I made with nails and not staples? Who can say?) started to poke through the bottom of my right arm — the one you always leaned on despite knowing that it was bad for your back and therefore wore down much faster. Then its front finally collapsed, and the lovely now-faded-pinkish upholstery gave way. I would say that I let myself go, but let’s be honest: it was all you.
Maybe all of this is why I finally chose to retire…Oh, wait, I didn’t, did I? No! One day you saw an email from one of your neighbors who was throwing away a chair, and then, five minutes later, in she rolled! She was sleek, with a mesh back and seat and far more adjustable features than I have. The only signs of use I noticed on her were a couple of telltale scratches on her arm (there are probably other signs, but since she’s a boring, sterile black, they’re hard to see). We both know she’s some kind of poser, not a real Aeron, and she doesn’t go as low as I do — her seat is higher by one whole inch! But…I get it. It was time.
As I sit here by the compost bin (Ha ha, good thing I don’t have a nose!), waiting to be put out at the curb and then dumped into one of those garbage trucks with the mangled stuffed animals on the front (a reminder of all of the many things about human beings that I’ll never understand), I’m trying to focus on the good times. Like how much you laughed when you watched panda bear videos for hours when you should have been writing while telling yourself you were “just trying to get inspired”; or when you got high and spun in circles to see just how dizzy you could make us (pretty dizzy!) until you vomited (thankfully you made it to the bathroom first); and how you spent all that time trying out different filters on Snapcamera, including these. (Told you: I saw everything.)
And I might be a little bit bitter about how this has all ended, sure, but in the end, I know we had something special. I was a real find that, because of how well we fit, made a huge difference in your life, helping you become the person you are today. Even if that’s basically the same person, but with far more wrinkles, aches and pains (which have nothing to do with me, but have just happened because you’re old).