November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Kitchen Table Wisdom

(Page 2 of 2)

September/October 2001
By William R. Stimson, The Sun (www.thesunmagazine.org/) 
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I don’t know exactly when the table vanished. One day, I just noticed it was gone. Maybe the super had thrown it out. Maybe someone had stolen it. I didn’t really care––not even when I broke my own table by standing on it to kill a roach on the ceiling. From then on, I just sat on the floor and ate out of a bowl on my lap. My life kept getting simpler and simpler. I tossed out my sofa bed and slept on the thin foam mattress. My only furniture was my desk and chair and two bookshelves. Otherwise, I lived completely on the floor, Japanese style.

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Maybe a year or two after the table disappeared, I came home from work to find a hand-printed "moving sale" sign on the front door. The hippie came in right behind me. "That’s me, man," he said of the sign.

"You’re leaving?" I asked.

"Yeah," he replied, starting up the steps. "I’m going out to Oregon. Things are still happening out there. I’m letting go of everything real cheap."

I didn’t want to buy anything, but I came up just to be neighborly.

I’d never been in his apartment before, though he’d lived right above me for years. No sooner did I walk in than I saw my table. He’d sawed the legs off so that it was only about a foot high: perfect for my Japanese style of living.

"How much for the table?" I asked.

"Fifteen dollars," he said.

I considered the price for a moment.

"That’s the same table you threw out," he added, sounding a little guilty.

"I’ll take it," I said.

And, pulling out a ten and a five, I bought my own table.

I folded up the short legs as the Italian man had done, wished the hippie good luck, and carried my prize downstairs, where I put it right in front of my mat on the floor, next to the fireplace.

That was more than 20 years ago. Friends have come and gone. I’ve been married and divorced. But I still have the table.

From The Sun (April 2001). Subscriptions: $34/yr. (12 issues) from Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834.

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