You can’t always be as cautious as you feel is necessary, but now that you’re here, go in anyway, make yourself comfortable and try not to worry. Probably there’s nothing to be afraid of. After all, the place is brightly lit.
Such a crowd! Lucky you got a chair. Of course, being prudent you want to look under it but you can’t because it sits flat on the carpet. Plus, it’s one of those BIG jobs – you know the kind – once you’ve sunk into it you can hardly get up from it. And how silly you’d look spying under your chair! Find a wood stool? Fat chance in this salon. As for your mantra ‘better safe than sorry’ – it clashes with feeling cozy and avoiding ridicule. Now me, I’d comfort myself by gloating, “Look at all those oblivious idiots happily snuggling down and in, but I know what lurks under chairs.” (I gloat educatedly.) You and I know about the uncurious, smug majority: it doesn’t fret; it follows blindly; it doesn’t think. Result? It either sees nothing or misconstrues things, and when these people finally realize the facts they go nuts. No wonder a favorite motto is ‘let sleeping dogs lie’. So they keep barking up wrong trees.
To focus properly let’s digress a bit longer. – The littlest nothings can cause trouble, very big trouble. You believe in viruses, natch. Ever see one? Nah, you believe what you’re told. You have faith in your faith. Think that’s smart? Look what happens when you vote. How often does the one who gets your vote end up getting your goat?
Now back to the business at hand, or more properly, underneath your behind and feet. If like me you have a friend who is a lab technician who faithfully invites you to view new microscopic horrors….then you might have a new item of faith, except how do you know that what you’re told you’re seeing is what you are seeing? Oh I see – the word’s the thing. Anyway, you’re no academic skeptic, so thanks to the microscope you have a new awareness. It may make you quite queezy sitting in that chair because now your brain thinks it is a microscope and lo! Things lurk below. Will you be less cowardly than me, investigate, risk social embarrassment? Hold your horses and consider: despite your brain you’re microscopeless, so if you do search you’d most likely miss all the teensy goodies down there, though some things might smash into your awareness – a mouse for example. This confirms what you always suspected: wherever you are disturbingly nasty specimens teem – under foot and under fauteuil. And all about you. All too often no microscope is needed.
However, if you’re like me, all you might be doing is douse yourself with alcohol – after all, it’s on the house and maybe it’ll kill whatever bugs might bug you.
Let’s see now – here we are (you and/or me), comfortably sunken in, possibly a bit besotted. If you are like me, you know that your all-enveloping fortress-like easy chair will make lofting your bulk out of it a hilarious spectacle and so you decide to stay put until the others leave – your inner radar, scouting below, be damned. You’ll ease your squirming by accepting another drinkie handed down to you by a passing administrator. Also you console yourself knowing one sure thing: in no way whatever are you in condition to safely kneel and lift that monster chair. Besides, what will you do when you discover…….? And look at the crowd. Who here worries? Oh maybe some do – about their partner’s fidelity or the economy, but worry about what’s underneath their chairs? …..Serves them right when..…….. (the only trouble is you know you’re one of them now, like it or not).
Not too happy with yourself you manage to leave, but give yourself credit. At least you’re a deep thinker, a careful observer who has survived while many non-seers haven’t. You feel bad because you didn’t act – merely to escape social ostracism. But hey, this time you were lucky: whatever was under your chair did no damage. So far.
Speaking of bugs, did I ever tell you that last year I went to the opera – had a $180 seat even. The lead singer, a basso, was indisposed – a common excuse that may stand for his plane having crashed, or his wife belting him. Anyway, with this indisposition-omen I should have foreseen trouble. After all, I am a watchful realist. Said my dad to the frightened me two weeks before W.W. II began: “Mark my words, son, there’ll be no war and no bombs falling on you.” It was a useful lesson.
Going home after the opera I wondered what might have laid low that big, so-solid-looking basso. I was still wondering when – about to succumb into my own easy chair – ouch! a bite, and another! –- Eight months later I can assure you that I’ve killed every one of those little critters, so don’t worry, you won’t get bedbugs from me the way I got them from my $180 seat. (Oh, and since I can’t check the seats, I no longer go to theaters.)
You’re looking at me funny. No, I’m just naturally itchy.
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