3-legged stools can bite my ass (+HB, Stovall!)
At the celebration at REBAR for Stovall’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Stovall!), they had these cool, modern, chrome stools with 3 legs. Nice to look at, not nice to sit in. They’re chrome, so they’re so slick you start to slip off the second you sit down. They’re too tall, so your feet don’t touch the ground OR the bottom foot bars. And they only have 3 legs. What’s the most stable number of legs? Well, 5, but I’d settle for 4. All night, if I leaned my center of gravity in a direction other than directly in line with one of the legs, the stool started to tip over. ALL NIGHT. It was a constant battle of wills and balance, catching myself at the first sign of a tip-over. “Not tonight!” I vowed. I always fall down in public places, especially bars, even though I am (generally) not that drunk.
At the very end of the evening, I’ve given up on the stool and I’m standing as we’re getting ready to leave; leaving takes longer, and longer, as Starchild continues rocking the house. My feet hurt. So I decide I’ll just perch on the very edge of the stool* and talk to Jen. Just for a second. That’s all it took – a split-second for me to rest one cheek on that stool in exactly the wrong place. I let my guard down. So stool goes flying over, still miraculously underneath me, so that I land on top of it, on my ass, with one leg of the stool slamming me magnificently painfully right in the crotch. Because a triangle… now that’s stable.**
At least I wasn’t holding a drink.
*WRONG. … WRONG. (in the words of Darkness himself, Charlie Murphy.)
**If this isn’t making any sense, I’ll come back and add diagrams later.
5 comments
You know how it is: form over function usually results in a sore ass.
Thank you, for coming and for the great gift, Ashley. You guys made my birthday special. I felt like a million dollars that night; and a buck & change until 5:00 the next evening.
3 legs are the minimum requirement for stability, and triangles are the most stable structures (see geodesic domes). Probably just poorly constructed stools.
Don’t blame geometry!
i swear – you just go, and try to plant your ass on those stools and let me know how that goes for you. i was not the only one. (i may have been the only one to actually fall, but lots were having difficulties.)
and i can blame geometry if i wanna! 3-legged crappy stools suck.
Anyone else giggling when they read the word “stool”?
Also, I’m writing this while sitting in bed, a very novel thing for me.
Laptop + 802.11g for the greatest victory.
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