it was love at first sight, you know, for me and shirlene.

haven’t you met? she’s my new armchair.

shirlene.

can’t you just see her exquisite beauty? i tell you, this chair demands accessories. the pink pillbox hat, the woven straw clutch, the big dangly pearls — she was made for lovin’ me.

it happened how most things do, when your mommy calls to tell her she’s on her way to you but it might take awhile because la la la stupid GPS and now there’s traffic and what does the wsb traffic site say? oh look red lights! i’ll just be a minute.

then an hour later, you call her to tell her your brother got into yale and oh, didn’t she tell you last night about that? that IS why he called after all and then you go, uh, well, no, you neglected to mention he got his OFFICIAL ACCEPTANCE TO PLAY WITH LASERS AT YALE but that’s ok because you have to ask your mother something you’ve now forgotten which is totally standard but fuck you hate when that happens and she says

STOP RIGHT THERE. GET IN YOUR CAR. I FOUND… YOUR CHAIR.

and you sigh and put on a bra and jeans but ooooooh are those tight so maybe we’ll go with the fleece drawstrings but hm it appears the drawstring is… broken? pshaw, there’s no chance they’ll fall down, right? besides, it’s about the chair.

the. chair.

and you’re sure you’ll just humor her, but it doesn’t matter, you’re watching a glee marathon and you never really got into that show despite the fact that it really bugs you how similar you are to lea michele’s character, and oh god! were you ever really that bad?

and you get there with your mother’s terrrrrrible directions but at least she remembered which fastfood restaurants to reference and didn’t mix them up which would reallllly put a crimp in shit because there are seven within this 3-block area and you find the place she’s talking about despite a complete lack of signage mostly because you’re AMAZING AT LIFE.

and you enter. hey, look, broken shit! i love me some good broken sh— WHAT.

and you see her.

your chair.

across a crowded room.

and somehow you know, you know even then.

that you’ll be writing sketchy-ass run-on tense-changing point-of-view-confused posts from the lap of shirlene.

oh, shirlene.