The Chair

  His favorite chair was older than me when we got married. The textured red fabric was so worn down on the seat and arms, you could see the individual threads hanging on for dear life. It was his mother's chair before it became his, therefore he would never part with it.
  Being a recliner, it had a tendency to recline whenever you didn't want it to, and the footrest always stayed up whenever you wanted to put it down. I suggested reupholstery once, but then the springs on the seat started to poke through the worn-out fabric and I figured, 'why bother?'
  The chair was banished to the man cave where it was draped with coats when the guys came over to watch football. It was a designated coat rack because it was too uncomfortable to sit in. Soon even the cat wouldn't sit in it, and that's saying something--this animal falls asleep in her own litter box.
  Yet still the chair remained a fixture in our home. It so closely resembled something you would find at the dump that I wondered if anyone would take it if I left it on the curb--as if he would ever consent to the chair being banished to the curb. It was his mother's, after all.