Samuel Johnson Is Indignant

Special Chair

He and I are both teachers in the university system and we will be teachers until we are too old to teach, and we would certainly like to be given a special chair at our universities, but what we have gotten so far is the wrong kind of special chair, a special chair belonging to a friend, a chair that swivels and has splayed feet and is special to her for reasons we can’t remember. We who teach in the university system would like a special chair so that we would be paid more and not have to teach as much and not have to sit on so many committees — we would sit instead on our special chair. But we have not been given any special chairs by our universities, only this strange heavy chair belonging to our friend, who moved away many years ago and had to leave it behind, and who does not want to give it up for reasons we have forgotten or never knew. All this time we have been employed by our universities only to teach from year to year without even the security of tenure. But now one of us has had some good luck and has been given a job with tenure, though not by his own university, and in leaving his present job, the job without tenure, he must also leave behind the chair special to our friend, because he is moving far away and there will not be room for it where he is going. Even though there is a great deal of large empty space in the state where he is going, more empty space than practically any other state but Wyoming, he will be living there in a very small house, too small for an extra chair, especially such a heavy one made out of a wine barrel. And so I will be the one to keep our friend’s chair for her now; it has passed from him to me, though not without effort, since it is so heavy. And perhaps, I am thinking, her special chair with its strange red vinyl upholstery, with its bunghole in the back, and its genuine cork, will now bring me good luck of a professional kind too.