How to Ship a Chair

As I believe in professional discretion, no names will be mentioned in this post.  Naturally the Dilettante would never be indiscreet.  Never.  Not Ever.  Not moi. Nope. Any resemblance in this tale to persons living or dead is almost coincidental.

One crisp autumn Sunday several years ago, I was doing some catch-up work at my store--putting plants away for winter, touchng up paint, gathering trash to take to the dump.  Although suitably dressed for the tasks, I was not so much dressed for polite company---plaid shorts and a striped shirt with no colors in common, workboots, polar fleece vest.   The style could best be described as Village People raid Jerry Lewis' closet   Although at that time of year, on that day, I could reasonably expect no one would see me, the unthinkable happened.   Up to the town dock pulled a Hinckley picnic boat captained by a famous life style maven who has a house on a nearby island (a boat savvy friend, who happened to see the arrival, icily mentioned that she had 'backed up to the dock').

Soon, I was uttering 'oh shit' to myself as her well dressed assistant appeared to ask if I could be open.  "Sure" I thought, "just let me go home, shave, and get out of the clown costume first?".   Soon the maven appeared, hale and hearty as always, followed by a tall and glamorous guy with vigorously cared for skin and a perfect haircut (the fates are always unkind---the contrast between my appearance and his at that moment was somewhat greater than the intellectual gap between Sarah Palin and Noam Chomsky.  Behind them were two very tiny women, both dressed against the cold---a trip across open ocean to our village on even a sunny October day would be chilly for even the heartiest among us. Their tininess was emphasized by the contrast with both the gentleman, and the lifestyle guru herself, a full sized gurl, nearly as large as I am.

Although no introductions were made (the lifestyle guru's manners can be famously missing on occasion), it soon became apparent that the tall guy was a famous action star, who had gotten his start in show business years before on a TV show about a homespun doctor and his young assistant--sort of 'Doctor Knows Best'.   Suddenly, like a crack of lightening, it occurred to the Dilettante that one of the tiny women must be his wife, one of the most famous singer/actresses of our age, who had only two or three days before completed her 47th or 103rd farewell concert in Las Vegas--I've lost track---and that the other tiny woman was her close friend, a famous fashion designer.

After a time, the famous couple, both very nice, she very shy, decided to buy a late 18th century Winsor sack-back side chair.   Inevitably the question of shipping came up.   I was proposing two simple options when the lifestyle guru, who has built an empire on better ways to do things (hers), shot down my suggestion of Fedex-ing the chair in a large box (I refuse to use UPS.  Ever.), and said, 'oh don't be silly---we'll take it back on the boat, and the next time one of my Suburbans  is going to New York (despite her frequent mentions of her hybrid Prius on air, the guru is actually a one-woman energy crisis, with a fleet of huge ozone burning vehicles), I'll have it dropped off and you can take it back on your plane".   The star hastened to say that she actually lacked her own plane, but instead merely used one of the Gulf Western jets.  The lifestyle maven then started a conversation about the convenience of having one's own jet, which I was sadly unable to join  (Like it wasn't already enough that they'd caught me dressed like Bozo on a bad hair day?)...

And thus, the chair got to California, by boat, car, lackey and plane.  Silly me.  I was just going to put it in a box and FedEx it....

So the moral of this story, faithful readers, is that for people who need people to deliver a chair,  having a private jet is very useful, and they are the luckiest people in the world.  So I'm not being funny, girl....and that's a good thing.