Bad Onely Activities: Killer Chairs June 14, 2010
Posted by Onely in Bad Onely Activities.Tags: asking friends for help, moving furniture, single living
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Although here at Onely we enjoy being single, sometimes we write about ill-considered or unfortunate activities that remind us that being coupled (or at least, living with someone) does have some advantages. Are these Bad Onely Activities bad enough that we should change our single status in order to avoid them? Read the following example and decide.
I felt sick one recent Friday night, and as I often do when I feel sick, I get an urge to move furniture. (Maybe it’s an attempt to reset my qi by altering the feng-shui of my house.) On the evening in question I decided that The Chair needed to go downstairs, STAT. I was having a gas fireplace installed in the basement and needed somewhere to sit and cozy up in front of the flames. Note that the fireplace was only partially installed at the time, and not even close to functional. But that The Chair needed to be downstairs now, tonight, in mere anticipation of the day when the fireplace would be complete and I could curl up in front of it.
The Chair had upholstery the consistency of old rec room carpet. A series of cats had clawed down the armrests so that bare wood showed through in spots. It was wide but still narrower than the staircase it needed to travel down. It was also very, very heavy.
At about 8:30 pm I dragged the chair to the top of the staircase. I intended a controlled push down the carpeted stairs. Slowly I shoved the chair down one step, then two, then three. Then the sofa bed inside unfolded.
Sofa bed? No one had slept on that sofa bed since my grandfather, and he’d been dead for thirty years. I forgot there was a sofa bed.
I saw the metal and mattress curl out like a tongue as the chair slid down one more stair–and then stuck. Fast. The more I pushed and yanked the more stuck it got. The wooded footpiece wedged in the bannister and the bed frame wedged against the drywall. I couldn’t lift the chair from above, and if I tried to shift it from below I would risk it coming free and crushing me with its unstoppable momentum.
I have no friends both close enough and strong enough that I felt comfortable calling them up on Friday night and asking them to risk their lives for me. So there I was, stuck upstairs with no way to get to my front door because the chair blocked the entire staircase. No moving company would come out to help me (wtf??). I was feeling sick, sweaty, and really, really stupid. So I did what I usually do when I feel sick, sweaty and stupid: I went to bed.
The next morning I unscrewed the footrests from the chair, which freed it from one of the banisters. After eighteen bruises, two gouged hand rails, one ripped molding, three inches of scraped drywall, two scratches on the new front door, and fifty-four thousand exclamations of, “Fuck you, chair!” I got it into the basement.
As I lay down afterward for what would be a four-hour nap, I had to wonder if being Onely meant I should make friends with more Marines.
–Christina
Photo credit: ChesterField Sofa
Onely.Org 
Ugh! That reminds me of the time my buddy didn’t show up to help me move, and I ended up moving everything I own by myself.
I don’t know what your finances are like, but could you have hired someone to move it? Could you have asked a neighbor? Maybe you could have put it on Craigslist and let whoever took it move it? Maybe you just need to keep one really buff guy friend in your back pocket! =)
All my neighbors are as weak as I am! Plus I couldn’t get out my front door to go talk to them. = ) And I did call moving companies, but they either didn’t call me back or said they didn’t do that kind of job. Maybe I should go on Craig’s List and advertise for a buff guy friend. I’m sure I won’t get any creepy responses to THAT ad. = )
CC
I honestly probably would have done the same thing in the situation (tried disassembling it / cannibalizing it.) I wonder if a handy-man would do that kind of job. They definitely would fix the hole in the wall that might be created from it! =P
Which further begs the question: if a moving company HAD agreed to come help you, how would you have let them in if you were trapped upstairs? Oh wait… please tell me you don’t leave your front door unlocked?! =8O
Sun~
(living without stairs)
HAHA you’re RIGHT! Actually, I would have had to let them in through my screen door in the back–so the situation was not as much of a fire hazard as if might have seemed!
CC
I’ve sold a sofa bed through Craigslist and the people who bought did all the heavy lifting… And I didn’t get any creepy responses. So, it depends on what you advertise there ;-).
Good idea–I should have advertised a free chair to whoever can come get it out of the stairwell!
I still have to depend on my dad for a lot of this, but I did manage to move one futon and assemble a new bed by myself (with a little help from my girls). I read once about a Rent a Husband/handyman service somewhere, and I’ve often longed for such a service to exist locally!
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