Still Crazy After All These Years

My friend Leslie in a photo the date of which we cannot recall.

One of the pleasures of returning to my home town has been new adventures with old friends, including my friend Leslie, who now lives with her husband in nearby Cupertino. We met in the seventh grade and were making trouble together almost immediately. Once I persuaded her to back me up in a talent show, lip-syncing to that great Angels hit "My Boyfriend's Back." 

The combination of the bad girl lyrics lip synced by two squares was unintentionally hilarious.

In another incident, which I do not recall, we reportedly sneaked over to her neighbor's house one night to see one of my Old Boyfriends kiss Leslie's teenage neighbor goodnight. (My mind is a complete blank.)

Now, some decades later, Leslie appears to have caught Obsessive Compulsive Chair Disorder from my mother! Isn't that wonderful?

She called me a few months ago, having read my various blog posts about my mother's eccentric chair collection and said she herself had found an unusual chair in a dark corner of a house she inherited. She wanted to know what I thought of it.

Leslie's old chair.

Naturally, since it was a tad dogeared, and I'm my mother's daughter--I thought it was terrific. Better yet, I told Leslie, I had one sort of like it! Take my old chair. Please!

One of my mother's old chairs, discovered among several dozen after her death.

Long story short, Leslie decided to reupholster her old chair and the one I had as well. Gosh I can't tell you how happy I was to place my tattered old chair in a good home. You can't just throw these things out, can you?

Then, a month or so ago, she asked me to help her select the fabric--like asking a member of Overeaters Anonymous to join a friend in a tour of a chocolate factory. What a hoot. For Leslie's home, full of beautiful ethnic objects from her travels, we chose a gorgeous ethnic print. Well, it looked like it might be gorgeous. The fabric sample was tiny--all one can do at that point is close one's eyes and pray.

Since Leslie is at her lakeside home for the summer, the upholsterer delivered the chair to my house, to hold 'til Leslie returns. 

The chair cleaned up better than a bad girl with a spa treatment. It is now an absolute stunner.

Leslie and I have known each other a long time, and I certainly do wish her well as she copes with the apparently contagious--and potentially expensive--Obsessive Compulsive Chair Disorder. I haven't told her about some of the bad side effects yet.

One of them is overwhelming chair envy, resulting in chair covetousness.

Now she's going to have to figure out how to get that old chair of hers away from me.

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