Hunt for a New Recliner

I am on the hunt for a few pieces of furniture, and the search has been eyeopening, feet-weary, hilarious, and mildly exasperating.

At the top of my wish list is a small, compact recliner— one that does not resemble something my father sat in forty-five years ago. You know the one. A hulking slab of brown leather capable of holding two Paul Bunyan bodies after an evening meal of meat, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, beans, and four glasses of milk—followed by half a cherry pie.

My house is not big. One chair like that would occupy the entire living room, or the bedroom, or possibly both at the same time.

What I want is a modest recliner—one that will hold my 125-pound body comfortably while I read, write, watch Johnny Carson reruns, or listen to 1950s rock-and-roll ballads. Something civilized. Something scaled.

My exhaustive search has taken me to resale shops, giant furniture warehouses, used-furniture dives, private homes, junkyards, and mysterious dwellings with no addresses and shadowy personnel whispering prices. I have sat on new, used, worn, pristine, comfortable, and back-breaking chairs—sofas, ottomans, stools, and even swings—all enthusiastically described as “perfect” and “top of the line.”

So far, every chair I liked cost just under $3,000. That is slightly above what I am willing to invest. After all, I am almost eighty-four, and I doubt I will wear it out in the time I have left to sit in it.

What has made this pursuit especially entertaining is observing how furniture displays are arranged, depending on the size of the showroom.

One warehouse-sized store had an entire wing devoted to bedding, another to recliners, another to ottomans, one for leather sofas, one for oversized coffee tables, with lamps and end tables scattered throughout like emotional support objects.

Then there was the place where the “prospective chair” was the one the shop owner himself had been reclining in for the past eighteen years.

At another stop, I asked a woman why she was selling a lovely electric recliner. She explained that it was so slow to unrecline that her trips to the bathroom were being dangerously delayed.

I jumped out of the chair, waved goodbye, and fled. Buying a chair, it turns out, can be entertaining, educational, and hazardous to one’s health. My quest for the perfect recliner continues—with hope in my heart, doubt in my mind, and an ever-increasing awareness that comfort, dignity, and bladder response time do not always align.