Hard chair, soft chair.

That’s the dichotomy my greatest rhetoric professor taught me. For a twenty-minute talk, spend ten hours of research in the hard chair and the soft chair’s for the ten hours of reflection on the relevance of your talk. Hard chairs discipline us to grind through the big books. Soft chairs encourage us to think like the people. He uses both when he writes oral manuscripts.

For me, I’ve isolated my work away from my office desk and dining room table to what’s called a secretary, this wall-mounted fold-out writing desk with shelves on top for incoming and outgoing letters. (I’m still hand writing to my pen pals for those of you who want to get in on it). At first, I used this striped, low-backed wooden chair with padded seating. Hard chair with a slight cushion. Good blend, I figured. My chiropractor disagrees… vehemently. So I set that one to the side to hold my satchel (something else my chiropractor hates. He seems to think I’ve got the spine of a retiree. What does he know?)

I fell into the rocking chair by accident. It was one of those days where you’re on a roll and need to make a quick change Nascar style. I switched out chairs and went back to work. Over time, I noticed more back support, but that’s not the only thing that came…

Hard chair and soft chair. Research chair and “so what?” chair. These are the chairs where we nurse and rock our kids to sleep. Soft chair. And yet these are the chairs of old men in old English wings who still tell the old stories to their students. Hard chair. In rockers fathers hold daughters as they cry. Soft chair.A rocker tested Benjamin Martin’s carpentry skills at the start of The Patriot. Hard chair.

I tell stories for a living. That may change, but the truth is, you can pull the man out of the Fae, but you can’t rip that Faen look off of the man’s face. Ask Lewis. Tolkien. Kvothe. Chesterton. MacDonald. Rowling – who can’t help but write another mystery. Spencer. Artemis Fowl. Homer. Long as I live, I figure I’ll be telling stories. Long as I live, I figure I’ll be doing research.

So I threw away the hard chairs and soft chairs, the dining chairs and the recliners, the desk chairs and those god-aweful monstrosities with padding, wheels and back support that call themselves “office chairs.” I found a blend, an amalgamation, an alchemical wedding of research and relevancy. I’ll read to my kids bedtime stories in one, write my tales in one, read the classics in one and hopefully die in one at the end of a well-learned life.

From now on, I’m a rocking chair man.

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