It's Alive!

Our humble shack is basically a collection of run down furniture that's just about ready to go in the dumpsters. For school chairs we have the 5 year old metal chairs with unscrewed backs, leaving them just bare skeletons. The sponge backing of the seats had long been devoured by itchy little hands with nothing else to do but tear apart the furniture.

The fate of the dining table downstairs is such that it has to share its chairs with the school table upstairs. Since we all eat on the floor anyway, we only left two chairs at the dining table and brought the other three upstairs. However, a problem presented itself whenever dear ummi cooked a dish that requires eating on the table, such as spaghetti or a bowl of noodle with soup. Three little people need three chairs to sit on. So dear father had to bring down one chair to the dining table.

it is such a hassle to keep on transporting this sole chair up and down the stairs each time, so we left the chair in the kitchen. When time for school came, one little person is without a chair. So what to do?

"Get my chair from my room," ordered Dear Ummi.

So in rolled the big red computer swivel chair on wheels complete with armrests. As was mentioned, our house is basically a collection of run down furniture ready to be housed in the dumpster. This red chair is not different. While it may look grand and magnificent, its back is devoid of the light wooden backing, thus exposing a light brown surface bordered by crudely stapled red fabric extending from the front. Suffice it to say, those staples have snagged many a limb and sleeve of anyone unlucky to tumble into its sphere of existence.

Poor Little H became the victim of this chair in question, as we shall see.

"Ummi! the chair scratched me!!" H yelled one day, showing his mother s long whitish scratch on his arm.

"No, the chair didn't scratch you. You ran into the chair," she replied, oh ever so wisely.

H went back, proabbly grumbling silently about the damned chair, yet forced to use it . Otherwise he would be sitting on the floor. Now that wouldn't be acceptable at all, now would it?

The day after that, while Dear Ummi went out of the room to check on something downstairs, things were brewing up in the schoolroom upstairs. When she same into the room, H was wailing on the bed, clutching his head. S was sitting on her chair mumbling something about H's mishap, while N minded her own business, oblivious to the happenings around her.

Dear Ummi looked upon the scene rather patiently, which is rather strange, as she is wont to bursts of impatience at such scenes. She went to H and sat down on the bed, asking him what had happened.

"I told you the chair was alive!!" H yelled in between his wails, still clutching his head.

Nothing sounded more ridiculous yet tickling than what he had just blurted out. Dear Ummi laughed her heart out and gathered H in her arms.

"Are you strong?" she asked H. He nodded.

"Who's stronger, you or the chair?" she continued.

"The chair," H replied sullenly.

"But how? It doesn't drink milk, or eat protein," she said. A reluctant smile tugged at H's mouth.

"Well, it eats my bomp*," H said, relenting to the smile.

"And my blood," he continued.

Dear Ummi thought, this boy really has a powerful imagination. Hence, a character is born in the house.

It's alive!! It's alive!! And all the run-down furniture yawned from their long slumber and stretched their worn limbs rather grotesquely in all unimaginable directions.