On Torturing Ayn Rand

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.          Logan Pearsall Smith

I have Ayn Rand's chair. Really. Apparently she was a very close friend of an author in our small town and somehow gave her this grey vinyl upholstered chair on which she used to write her novels. I'd read one of her books, The Fountainhead and never read the other, Atlas Shrugged. How I acquired the chair was happenstance. I was at the dump the day my friend Colleen was going to unceremoniously toss the chair into the abyss below. I said, "Hey, Colleen, are you getting rid of that chair?" "Yes," she said, "You can have it, I'm moving and can't be bothered with a house sale." "Great, I need something comfortable for my deck." "Oh, you should know it was given to me by Ruth Beebee Hill who told me she got it from her dear friend, Ayn Rand who supposedly used to sit on while she wrote her novels." That incidence occured about ten years ago.

For the first several years I enjoyed sitting in the chair and moved it all around my garden, not an easy task as it was old, well made and therefore heavy. I carefully oiled the legs and put the chair out of the weather each fall. Then I started to be curious. I had been very reverent with this chair and wanted to know more about the former owner. I had read The Fountainhead when I was twenty and remember being impressed. However folks, I was twenty. Since I had her chair I thought I might look into her books again. I didn't like what I read. This was not great literature and I thought her money grubbing and selfishness were repulsive. Then I looked into her biography and found that she wasn't a real swell person. Sure, she got what she wanted, fame and lovers but she reputedly was a miserable human being. Not exactly someone I wanted to emulate or honor.

Funny how these things work, I lost interest in caring for the chair. What happened next happen very gradually. First I stopped oiling the legs, then I 'forgot' and left the chair out in the weather and it developed cracks in the wood of the legs and also in the upholstery. Then I abandon any thought of dragging the chair to safety through the winter and watched out the window as snow piled on it. I had my thoughts of, "gee, I seem to be torturing Ayn Rand." After several seasons like that with the cracked legs, the chair began to sag, bending gracefully toward the earth. Torture plain and simple and I couldn't make myself care.

Finally I said to my husband, "we have to do something about that chair." He said, "I was going to cut the legs off and throw it in the dump." How's that for irony.

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