The Sitter

I

I've sat down many places in my eighty-six years on this planet.

I've sat on a sagging, stained, decades-old couch. I've sat on a brand-new sofa with springs so tight I bounced the second my bottom touched the cushions. I've sat on a padded armchair in a Parisian café overlooking the Seine. I've sat on airplane seats. I've sat on countless benches. I've sat on folding chairs, wheelchairs, bar-stools, barber's-chairs, and, once, a golden throne.

Yet this is the story of the last place I sat, and how I never stood up again.

Most stories have a happy ending. The ones that don't: those were the kind I always loved. Heartbreak, divorce, misery, death. All the best stories ended that way. Stories like that always showed life as I knew it; and how I knew it would end. And my life did end: one Tuesday afternoon, on the bench between the sneaker shop and the used bookstore in the second largest mall in Pennsylvania. Now I am a dead man, doomed to stand forever in the afterlife. I would have loved my life's story, had I not lived it.

My ex-wife, the most exciting woman I had ever known, once said that sloth was the worst sin one could commit, because it showed disrespect towards those who lived life to the fullest. At the time, I felt I disrespected no-one, since sitting down made me feel more alive than anything I did standing-up or lying-down. If the euphoria I felt when I planted myself in an upholstered loveseat or a plastic garden-chair meant I was a sinner, so be it. Bring on the hell-fire, I thought.

Over the years, Jane, my ex-wife, couldn't reconcile with my sentiments about sitting down, and it brought our relationship to its breaking point. She left the day I brought home a fourth bean-bag chair into our one-room apartment.

"You know," she said, packing her suitcase. "Some people live on their knees. Others stand for what they believe in. But you, Donald, you just sit. No more, no less. I mean, you're not even making a statement, for Christ's sake. Remember those sit-ins we used to do in college? That kind of sitting meant something. It changed the world. But you have no interest in changing the world anymore, do you, Donald? You'd rather sit back in some armchair and watch it all pass by around you. Well, the world isn't your theater, darling. You're part of this grand charade called life, too. And a life spent sitting down is no life at all. Do you understand? You're not living if you're sitting. And all you do is sit: sit, sit, sit. It's going to be the death of you, Donald. Do you hear me? You're going to die sitting down. As for me, I'm going to live and die on these two feet. I'm walking out now, Donald. Don't bother getting up."