My Chair Debacles

Dear Friend,

How are you this week? Have you had any fun thoughts lately?

My week is going well, especially with the anticipation of Easter holiday coming up where I will actually travel around Indonesia a bit. I'm sure I will write and tell you about it.

Have you ever had any mishaps with chairs? I have. I thought it might be fun to share a couple of stories with you. First I will take you to a summer cabin up in Sendai where the recent tsunami hit. This story takes place many years ago when Sendai was not yet devastated by a natural disaster.

One summer day, many years ago, my family was enjoying the creaks and smells of our missions rustic beach cabin. My mom was out back watching the ocean and listening to the waves, my dad was outside working on something, my oldest sister was in the kitchen baking blueberry muffins for our traditional family breakfast beach picnic, and I was at the dinning room table playing a game with my other sister and some friends.

I was seated at the head of the table. I'm sure everyone knows that if you sit at the head of the table, you have to reach the farthest to get to the middle. Naturally, when the game got exciting, I would stand up to be able to reach better, slapping the table at appropriate moments in the game. When the action settled down, so would I, as I relaxed into the cushioned chair that I knew would be waiting for me. One typically trusts a chair, if it was there when you stood up, it will be there when you sit down. Being under this impression, after a rather exciting part of the game, I comforably relaxed into my chair.  To my surprise, my body kept falling until I hit the floor. Sitting on the floor, slightly dazed, I saw everyone peeking over the table to see if I was okay, my mom rushed inside after hearing a crash, and my sister peeked through the kitchen doorway to see what had happened. "Opps, I thought you weren't using the chair," she said half apologetically, half laughingly. Apparently since I wasn't sitting in the chair, my sister decided she could put it to better use as a stepping stool. We had a good laugh from that one, especially since she didn't do it on purpose!

From that point on, I was careful about sitting down, making sure no one took my chair out from behind me. Little did I know, sometimes chairs have a mind of their own. This leads me to my next story, it happened a week before I graduated from high school. 

We had one week left of school. Most of our classes were finished, including our senior comps. Some friends and I decided to celebrate by having a little bonfire. We met at a nice little park that had a designated area for bonfires. We gathered together underneath a pale blue sky as the sun prepared to set, a perfect time to build a bonfire. Unfortunately, the park security noticed what we were doing and informed us that we couldn't make a fire. Why not, you ask? Apparently, it was already too late; all campfires had to be finished by 5 pm. What? The sun hadn't even set yet! How could it be too late to make a fire? If anything, it was too early!

Undauntedly, we decided to move locations and find another park; we had papers to burn! We picked up our lawn chairs and other paraphernalia and walked out of the park. Here are some snippets of what our conversation probably sounded like during our search for a new location.
"So much for that."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, where do we go now?"
"I think there's a park near my house."
"Okay, let's check it out."
"I'm hungry, can we stop at 7/11 first."
"Yeah, I haven't eaten dinner yet."
"I already ate, so I'll stay outside with the chairs." (That last statement was from me.)

This is where my chair tale begins. There I was, waiting outside the 7/11 while my friends bought  onigiri's and other food items. One friend quickly bought his food and came outside to keep me company. That's when we had a brilliant idea.
"How fun would it be to sit in the lawn chairs, on the sidewalk, looking into 7/11?"
"No one else does it, so why not? Let's do it."
I opened up the little yellow lawn chair and confidently sat in it. Apparently I was too confident, I hadn''t fully open it up. As a result, the lawn chair tried to eat me up, or comically fold up with me inside it. Suffice it to say I was extra careful the next time I tried to sit in the chair; that is, after my friends had a good laugh and cracked a couple of jokes about the event.

This ends my two random stories about chairs. Do you have any?
In case you were wondering, the bonfire was a success and led to many good memories.

The rain has been falling a lot today, and for the first time I have a leak in my room, right over my doorway. Thank God it isn't over my bed! I just hope the roof tile doesn't fall down in the middle of the night, that would scare me like crazy!

I'll let you know what happens!
Your friend,
Rebekah