That's one big mushy comfortable chair. I should know, I've been in it often enough. Yessir, it's a sweet ride. But there's a downside. For those of us on the downside of life, that is. Getting up out of that chair requires an extraordinary expenditure of energy, the application of which puts a dangerous amount of pressure on the various orifices and sphincters and excape valves with which the human body is thoughtfully equipped, and all of which--you youngsters listen up now, it's just as well you learned what's in store--deteriorate with age, to the point where they resemble wizard's sleeves and whatnot. Imagine you're hosting a birthday party for some snot-nosed kid and in preparation you blow up two or three hundred balloons. Know how your mouth feels? Well, there you go. Thass what I'm talkin about. That comical vocal grunt you hear emanating from oldsters when they get up from a chair, well, that's the least of it. Knowing that if my little jazz ensemble  were to launch into an improvised solo on another instrument, I would never be able to set foot in FairGrounds Coffee again, I devised a safe-rising procedure that involves slowly sliding down so I'm sitting on the floor, then crawling over to a nearby floor lamp and pulling myself up by arm power alone, thereby avoiding undo pressure buildup in more critical areas. If this were Starbucks, such a maneuver would elicit shocked stares and random yelps of "Merciful Heavens!" and the like, but at FairGrounds, it's hardly noticed.

Speaking of snot-nosed kids, I just remembered an incident from my 20's, sitting in a bar with friends, and someone made a very funny comment, which made me involuntarily send a tube of snot like 8 inches out into the air and then right back again, clean as a whistle. And everyone at the table stared in disbelief, not being able to sort out whether they had just seen what they thought they'd seen, and I played it real cool, as I am wont to do, acting as if nothing at all had happened. But I caught them sneaking glances at me throughout the evening. One of the high points of my young life, and I'm glad to be able to share it with you.