I sat across from my dad in an armless, white, wooden chair with loose joints that creaked and rocked each time I shifted my weight from one butt cheek to the other. His chair was the same.
While eating leftover meatloaf and waiting for mom/wife and sister/daughter to come home to give us something to talk about, we started laughing at the noises emanating from below.
It got to the point where we co-ordinated our weight transfer such that the chairs would groan in unison under the weight of our not-so-fat asses. Then, as one of us should have anticipated, the predictable happened, and the front right leg of my chair shattered at the joint where, only moments prior, it met the seat portion of my chair, and, now, was ninety degrees away from where it should be. I fell hard and I fell fast until my butt met the floor, the back of my head hit the shoulder of the chair, and my chin slammed against the edge of the kitchen table.
This was an instance where the outcome was greater than the literal summation of the individual parts. Sure, my tailbone, cranium, and chin hurt on their own, but the combustion of pain synapses firing simultaneously caused the blood vessels in my eyes to burst.
I laugh when in pain, and was now alternating between giggling uncontrollably and yelling at the chair while looking like the Virgin Mary crying blood on the eve of a miracle.
Looking back, I have no recollection of what my dad did in the moment after my collapse. I have a hunch that, prior to lurching in my direction, he took one last bite of ketchup-covered meatloaf because it was excellent.
Written from 9:05 pm to 9:35 pm on Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at home in Traverse City, Michigan.