Friday, February 25, 2011

Free chairs!

Do you need chairs? We have 2 really, really comfy black chairs and we don't need them anymore. They are in perfect condition. You can come and get them now!!!!!

My mom always says we should give to the needy. So if you need chairs you can have ours for free. You can have our soap too.

We live in the house with the big u driveway.

My mom plays tennis at 11 o'clock so that would be a good time to stop by.

ok. See you later.

PS. If you see my mom's station wagon in the driveway don't stop!
PSS. Or my dad's car.

-Kris, age 9


The seats on our chairs are black.
This is the ad I would have written if they had Craig's List back in 1973.

Yeah, right.

I was way too chicken for that. But the thought would have crossed my mind as I sat in one of the chairs. I would daydream about selling those chairs for sure. That, I know.

I hated those chairs when I was a kid. Mainly because I spent hours sitting in them. They were the original "time-out" spot designated by my mom. In fact I think she invented it. It wasn't called time-out back then. It was just called go-sit-on-the-black-chair-NOW.

Did you ever talk back to your mom and stomp around so hard the walls shook? Well if you did that in our house you would be headed for the black chair. Yell at your sister for touching your stuff? You're headed for the chair again. Knocked down your little brother's beer can collection? Yep. Go sit down.

I vividly remember the chairs in our living room. They were placed right in the middle of the room on top of the freshly raked, celery green shag carpet. Yes, we vacuumed and raked that carpet with a metal rake each week.

Who rakes carpet anyway? Well, back in the 70's we did. (And yes, it's the same rake you use to smooth out the sand trap on a golf course.) It made the room look perfect, I guess. Like a freshly mowed lawn. You could see the teeniest little footprint on that raked carpet. So as you can imagine, the living room was pretty much off limits. Unless you were being punished for a time out in the black chair.

You couldn't see outside when you sat in the chair. Because seeing outside might be interesting. And that was not the point of sitting in the black chair. The point was to be miserable and uncomfortable. You faced the piano, the empty front hall and the front door. You longed to escape off the chair and out the door. But you didn't dare.

The leather seat got hot and sticky on your skin as the tears roll down your cheeks onto your legs. The cane backing gave you something to poke at as you "thought about what you've done." Why did she think I could only think about what I've done sitting there in that chair? Did she have any idea how uncomfortable it was? I'm pretty sure she did.

When you have four kids you need a black chair. Or two. And a living room that is off-limits to everyone but adults. These chairs saved my mom's sanity. (Along with the big jug of Tyrolia wine.) I get that now.


Today's The Red Dress Club Topic: imagine you've just had a fight with a friend, a co-worker, husband, significant other, child - you get the picture. You're mad. It's time for revenge.What would you sell? write a humorous listing for eBay or Craig's list. Talk about the items and why they must go. 

15 comments:

  1. I even remember having small enough fingers that i could poke them through the cane back holes. Seriously though, I don't remember the green shag carpet or having to rake the carpet - that's funny! We must have gotten a better vacuum by the time I was old enough to remember all that.

    Love, your YOUNGER sista :)

    ooooh! I just felt the virtual pinch from you

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  2. I'm glad your mom passed on the wine to you! Very original to remember the time outs!...:)JP

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  3. I just had flashbacks to when I had to rake our brown shag carpet.

    The twitches are starting...

    Those are great chairs, though!

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  4. I love the idea of selling time-out chairs!

    Raking the rug. I'm happy to say my mother wasn't enough of a housekeeper to make us do that!

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  5. This is a great twist on the prompt...loved it!

    And we grew up with a great ORANGE shag carpeting. Wow. Can you imagine in our lives now having to not only vacuume but RAKE the floor?

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  6. I liked your post. This was cute! And raking shag carpet with an outdoor metal rake, that is funny! I'll have to ask my hubs if he ever did that. My parents did not have shag carpet but his did.
    TRDC

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  7. This is beyond funny, Kris.
    I love this bit, "It was just called go-sit-on-the-black-chair-NOW."
    And the beer can collection? Hysterical.

    Awesome job with the prompt!

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  8. I love this. That cane backing is soooooooo 70s. It brought back an immediate visceral response.

    Well done.

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  9. That was awesome. Funny how looking back as mothers we can see why OUR moms did the things they did.

    Like rake the livingroom floor.

    And have timeout chairs.

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  10. Yep, you captured it perfectly, that feeling of being put in timeout and having to "think about what you did", and the feeling of understanding what your mother went through with that jug of wine...

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  11. When I had the "black chairs" reupholstered, the first thing you all said was "we know those are the black chairs". You never wanted to sit in them even after they ended up in Kathy and Mikes living room before they met their demise......Somebody liked them and Kathy sold them. I wonder if she told the new owner the story of the "blue chairs"?
    Yes, we did have to rake the carpet.....we had 7 rooms to rake on the weekend.........and the whinest of the four of you got to rake the most........that was usually David!
    Did you know that shag is back in style?
    Not in this house!!!!
    Mom (still laughing)

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  12. Mom, you won't believe it, but you can buy the chairs new for $1,400. Yikes! I hope Kathy got some dough when she sold them. (Click the link by the picture of the chair.)

    No shag for me either!

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  13. hi 'm glad i don't have the black chair
    thanks mom
    love elli

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  14. $1,400? I told Mom we should never have given those chairs to Kathy! But actually I was glad to get rid of them so that your Mother would quit making me go sit in one of them.
    Loved the story Kris; I'm still laughing!
    Dad

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  15. Thanks for stopping by my blog.
    We also had the shag that had to me raked I used to lay on the floor and draw faces in it.
    Great post.

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Thanks for your feedback!

~Kris