8/10/2019 Comfortable Chair - Moore
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The Comfortablc (.,hrri r:I-Ising Flumor rn
Creative NonfictionDINTY W. MOORE
\Zor want a chair that makes you comfortable, isn't that
right?"I My wife and I, blundering into a furniture showroom
justslightly smaller than the state of Delaware, found ourselves
ambushedby a chipmunk of a man. He was barely over five feet tall,
stooped byage. His dark hair was thinning in patches, and his
robin's egg blueblazer was as unstylish and unattractive as any
blazer I've ever seen.But he had clear, direct eyes, and quite the
smile.
That was my initial assessment. 'What he saw, perhaps, were
twoshy, middle-class pigeons with "easy sale" tattooed on their
foreheads.
The gentleman introduced himself as Howie, "your furniture
con-sultant for today," pumped my hand and winked at my spouse.
"Youwant a comfortable chair, yes? One you can sit in and
relax?"
He was, it seemed, not just a furniture consultant but a mind
readeras well, having intuited by -y mere explanation "we're
looking atchairs" that Renita and I had absolutely no interest in
an uncomfort-able chair that made us squirm and kept us endlessly
tense.
"I'm going to take you aroundr" he announced, a trace of
Brooklynin his voice. "'We have over three thousand chairs in our
showroomtoday. I'm going to show you all of them."
Later, after I had turned up my nose at the first few offerings,
hereally said this:
"I only want to make you happy."Even my wife has never said that
to me. Howie did, however, and I
began to believe him. He was pushy, slick, odd, and yet it
becamesomehow impossible not to like the little man. His gaze was
warm andneighborly. He had that slow, spreading smile. I don't
understand howit works, but within moments of entering Howie's
magnetic field, Iwanted to befriend him. I wanted him to be my
grandfather, eventhough I suspected that if he were my grandfather,
the piece of butter-
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