is this seat taken?
Left: white chair on cement pier facing ocean
Right: brown chair propping glass door to balcony open
It seemed like a pretty common practice to leave chairs out in the streets. All the chairs in this essay were just from last September. These makeshift, often plastic, sometimes communal spaces were left unguarded. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if there was an unspoken rule about which street chair belongs to which grandma or grandpa. They all probably had owners that would have fought you to the death if you tried to take their seat. But I never actually saw people sitting in these street-chairs. I imagine that COVID-19 was partly why, but perhaps I'm not out and about when street-sitters are.
I never know what the perfect temperature for a chair is, but it seems like my roommate's cat does. No one likes it when their butt touches an icy cold, metallic bench that was clearly designed to keep people away. But I also don't like it when I lay my butt on a seat that is warmer than room temperature. It is especially uncomfortable to experience when unexpected, like when you find your little corner chair in a coffee shop or when you grab a seat in a movie theater. Whose butt did my butt just kiss? How long has that butt been kissing this seat? Is that butt done kissing this seat, or are its cheeks on their way back? My roommate's cat never seems to mind butt kisses. I can get up from my chair for a second, and boom, there he is.
Acceptable forms of sitting have changed while I was gone. I remember I was in the fifth grade when my dad taught me to change from sitting cross-legged to sitting on my knees when accepting something from my grandparents. But last year, my grandparents protested when I sat up on my knees. They said, your knees will regret it later. There were other forms of sitting that weren't allowed in front of adults: sitting with one leg crossed over the other, sitting with your legs spread wide (especially so for girls), sitting with one leg tucked in and the other knee propping up your elbow. Maybe it is the times that are changing; maybe I can start considering myself as one of those adults.
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Left: two metal chairs and a wooden chair sitting on sidewalk
Center: white chair casting a long shadow at sunset
Right: three stacked green plastic chairs branded lying on their backs
Living in America has changed the way I sit, but not by much. I found chairs to be higher, bigger, taller, a little less cushioned, a little less accessible. Sometimes it is easier to sit with one leg crossed over the other since my feet can't touch the floor comfortably. One habit that hasn't died in me, yet, is the tendency to hug my bag on my lap when I'm sitting out in public spaces. I'm rarely concerned about getting mugged. No; I picked up this anxious habit from years of being told stories about men who illicitly take photos or videos of women's legs on the bus. It was too late for me when I realized that a bag wasn't going to hide me from patriarchal violence; I had already grown accustomed to finding comfort when my bag was on my lap.
Left: two round blue seats attached to street light pole
Right: assortment of blue and red chairs with the Coca-Cola brand
My dad sits at the head of the table, even when he is eating alone. It annoys my mom to no end. She sits on his right, facing the living room to see the view outside the window. She complains about feeling crowded, but doesn't move. It's not that she doesn't have enough room; it's that she wants my dad to sit farther away. That leaves an obvious choice for me: the seat across from my mom and left of my dad. It never occurred to me that we had six seats at a table when at most there were only three of us and more often than not, two. But sometimes we did have family over. The weekend my grandma came up to stay with us disrupted the seating assignment balance. As the matriarch, she got to select her seat first while we all hovered, holding our breaths, watching her choose. It was my seat, and I was shunted one over.
Left: wooden chair sitting tilted in front of grey brick wall
Right: two rolling chairs on top of Samsung air conditioner
I hear people debate about the best seat on the plane. Is it an aisle seat or a window seat? Do you see the world shrinking and growing in front of you, or do you get extra leg room and easy access to the bathroom? The actual answer is pretty simple. It's the first class seats, aisle or no aisle. Yet, every time I fly I find myself pouring over the seat chart, debating which blue square to select, as if my choice could alleviate the discomfort of being stuck inside a flying metal can with an economy class ticket.
Of course, I am not against seat assignments in general. Many public transportation seats are designated for elders, pregnant people, or people with disabilities. I was in line for the subway once, when a grandma silently pushed me out of line; I hadn't realized I was standing in the line that led straight to designated seating. When I'm taking the bus, I try to grab the seat behind the bus driver. It is one of the few undesignated single seats up front. Its relatively elevated position makes it inaccessible to some, but for me offers the penthouse view. I know I'm probably sitting on top of a wheel, and that I should still get up if the bus is full and an elder gets on. As people have been living longer than originally expected, the threshold for who can be considered elderly has been pushed up. A good rule of thumb is, if you know more than twenty people twenty years older than you who are still alive, then you probably don't qualify.
Left: three red plastic chairs surround red plastic table with cigarette tray on top
Right: blue-green plastic chair on dirt floor with tan makeshift seat cushion
When I first saw this yellow-green chair, I misread the Han character scribbled on the seat and the back as 王, which meant "king." I snapped this shot, thinking it was supposed to be a throne. It was only during editing that I saw the extra strokes. My partner told me 生 meant "birth, fresh, alive, living." It is used in words like birthday, thoughts, everyday, and life. He offered a few interpretations of what it could mean in this context. If the chair was in front of a meat or fish restaurant with the word "fresh" in its name, then it meant that the chair belonged to guests waiting in line. Otherwise, it could be a soft reference to Auguste Rodin's The Thinker , an invitation to sit and take a minute to think.
Left: yellow-green chair on sidewalk tied down to ground with plastic string
Right: red circular picnic table next to blue green cargo container
These chairs can be found in Sokcho, Goyang, Jeonju, Hongcheon, and Imsil.
