Ode To My New Beach Chair

Honest, this is not a commercial. Honest. I’m pretty much a beach rat and personally rate that as one of my more admirable (if not adorable) traits and I’m pleased to report a new on-line purchase. My old “sand chair” was on its last (short) legs at the end of last summer and I deep-sixed it soon after Labor Day. I knew at the time I would have to get on the stick in ’06 to buy a new one before the really hot weather drives the unprepared into the stores, so I sat down on Sunday and did a Google search, with excellent results.

My new chair is a light-weight, aluminum tubular-structured, canvas-covered (blue), wooden-armed, high-backed, 4-position recliner with a head-rest and cup-holder. What is really cool about it is that it’s also a back-pack with padded-straps and enough room to carry any and all beach accoutrements including a small cooler and, probably, weapons-of-mass-destruction. It’s the grooviest-to-date thing of its ilk I have ever seen. I ordered it from Target and the alacrity of its delivery (Tuesday) was amazing; so it was meant to be.

From the moment I opened the box I was in love with this chair. I set it up in the bedroom to try it out and it was excellently comfortable and I felt the sun in my face, the breeze in my pits and, hey, was that just a touch of salt-spray? I became heavy-lidded with psychological ennui. Would you think I was a major goof if I told you, for this experiment, I also stripped off and put on my Speedo? Maybe I’m admitting to too much here but I have large mirrored closet doors so I was able to get the full visual effect; droopy lids and all. I carried this adventure-in-relaxation even further by subsequently setting the chair up in the living room, a bag of crunchy Cheeto’s in hand and a diet wild cherry Pepsi in the cup holder. I put on the video of Finding Nemo and zoned out. One cool chair and, you know what, that Ellen DeGeneres is some sort of voice-over genius. I had forgotten that.

Further to this theme is that even though the carrying strap is broken, my old beach umbrella is still usable; but now it just won’t do because its rainbow colors are badly and sadly faded and has wispy threads around the edges and is therefore no longer acceptable as a complementary accompaniment to my spiffy new chair. It’s somewhat like having a dynamite wedding dress with inappropriate shoes.

So now I’ve got my eyes and Google peeled for the latest in umbrella design. Unfortunately the outfit that manufactures this chair is not in the umbrella business. Pretty short sighted of them, I must say.