The Last Stand

A few days ago I read an article that suggested if a person only stood more they could improve their health and maybe, with exercise and diet of course, lose weight. Although I am a card-carrying cynic, I took the advice to heart and vowed that I would quickly find ways to sit less in my waking hours. By the weekend I was on the hunt for a “standing” desk and today I finally found one I could afford. In less than five hours this afternoon, I even managed to inexpertly put it together.

And there it towers over in the corner looking pretty and tall while I sit at my short, comfortable little computer desk writing this column.

Of course more story stands between me and my new furniture than just a general reluctance to start doing all of my writing and computer work off my enormous ass and onto my feet. Like feuds and families, a history makes the simple complex. My old desk means more to me than just the place that props up my monitor. Even with its chipped paint and scuffed legs, the heavy, squatty, dark and simple little beast has more meaning to me than its use warrants.

You see, my wife painted this table for me by hand years ago as a way of customizing it just to my liking.

Almost nine years ago when I “inherited” the desk from a friend who was buying “up”, the very plain, cheap thing was solid wood, but with a faux-grained laminate and an unattractive light-brown color. I hated the way it looked, but it was exactly the height I desired and had just the right amount of surface real estate for my needs. A lack of one of those annoying under-desk pull-out keyboard trays or shin-mashing bottom braces made it safe and extremely comfortable as well. It never fit in with our other office decor, and I was always a tad ashamed for people to see it since most of our other furniture was fairly attractive or new… and usually black or silver or grey, my colors of choice. I tolerated it, but always vowed to get a better looking desk when I could find one I could afford.

Then one day, out of the blue, I came home to find my desk in the garage and Trina bent over it, blasting the heck off the top of it with an electric hand sander. As I walked up I could see her just muscling that sander back and forth with a look of pleased determination in her eyes. As I approached and screamed a hello, she pulled down her dust mask and gave me one of her trademarked grins, maybe just a little bigger.

Turns out she had decided that if we couldn’t afford a nice desk that met all my requirements but looked modern and flashy in a shiny black paint, then by God she would make me one.

It took her the better part of a week to completely strip, sand, paint, repaint, and seal the desk, but when she was done it was beautiful. Sleek and dark with a durable finish for my heavy use, it was awesome and I loved it. I couldn’t have bought a more perfect desk for me, but she had made it happen with her own effort, blood, sweat, and bone. It was not possible to be more blessed than at the moment she proudly set it up in my computer room and the two of us gazed upon such a fine piece of work.

I have had that desk ever since and loved it every day.

But now time has forced me to try something new; some of the old won’t work any more. The truth is that I DO sit way too much at the computer and force my body to go dormant for most my waking hours. I know I won’t magically transform into an underwear model overnight, but I know this will help. And I will enthusiastically embrace all the help I can possibly manufacture right now.

But still I am sitting here.

It seems like such a small effort to just get up and sweep clear the junk on this old thing and make way for the new one. It’s only wood and paint and screws and nails. But more every day the new buries the old and week by week Trina grows fainter in my memory. I know I need, for physical and probably mental health, to take a stand at that new desk, but part of me doesn’t want to go.

I will get up soon and set up that shiny new four-legged metaphor; I have to do it.

But for a few more minutes I think I’ll sit here and run my fingers over the chipped and fading black paint, just me and these little memories.

Pigassus