New Thing #10: Breaking A Chair By Sitting In It

Broken_ChairSpoiler Alert: One of the upcoming "New Things" was going to be a trip to a furniture store to buy new dining room furniture. That's going to have to happen sooner rather than later.

During dinner Wednesday night, the chair I was sitting in went right out from under me.

And it was kind of hilarious.

A couple of things you need to know:

1) I have been thinking an awful lot about my weight lately. This incident did me no favors.

2) The dining room table and chairs are hand-me-downs. My wife and I have had them for almost ten years now...and they go back in her family much farther than that.

So they were definitely on the way out. We'd have to pop the dowels connecting the legs to the seat back in every once in a while to make sure the chairs weren't getting too flimsy.

That's kind of what made this so hilarious. As I was eating Wednesday, I felt the chair shift when one of the dowels popped out. I bent to look to my right, to see if it was something I could quickly fix. And when I shifted my weight, the chair totally gave.

My daughters (and, to a slightly lesser extent, my wife) were quite concerned, so that was a nice side result. But I was fine. (Other than my hurt pride. Seriously, no matter what your weight situation - I'm definitely not too overweight - a chair breaking under you is going to do some ego damage.)

This could have been a funny "New Thing" even if I had staged it, allowing it to break below me, cartoon-style, knowing the chair was going to break someday.

The fact that it happened organically makes it even better.