Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

The Case Against the Stool

The stool, with only a handful of exceptions, is worthless.

It hit me yesterday when I found myself trying to eat some Thai food in an uncomfortable position. The idiots who owned and operated the joint had provided about four stools for customers (such as me) to eat their overpriced and not really all that scintillating food. Presumably, the idea was that because human beings took up space, the space in this "restaurant" (more of a takeout booth, actually) was better used for preparing more food, encouraging a revolving circle of food purchasers to be encouraged out once bags were in hand, and thereby increasing a profit margin. Better this, I suppose, then something that ensured long-term customers, such as accommodating the customer by providing him with an ACTUAL FUCKING CHAIR rather than a stool improperly aligned to normal vertices (arms to eating surface, legs to floor, the way the human body is constructed), thereby encouraging the customer to come back and eat his pad thai without hunkering over, looking about as pathetic as a bipedal Mario Brothers turtle.

Of course, if you are holding something along the lines of a guitar and you are playing for three hours, the stool makes sense. If you need to bend your partner over for a quickie before work or just after you put the kids to sleep, the stool is about as good as it gets. If you own and operate a bar and you need an excuse to call the cops if the truly sloshed drink to much, stools are a very handy way to gauge a drinker's balance. Certainly after about nine martinis, lumbar support is a nice thing to have. But without it, the highly inebriated customer is ensured a backless flop backwards or the free flow of the head onto the bar, thus ensuring a definitive position and justification for a bartender to call a cab.

But aside from these rare situations, what general value does the stool have? I venture to say: not much.

Let's consider the terminology that has stemmed from the stool: stool piegon; the stools that one might find in a toilet; the toadstool; the ducking stool (sometimes a cucking stool), a chair used in common torture to tie and duck someone into water; the faldstool, which requires a worshipper to kneel down and pray; and, if you are unfortuante enough to take it, the stool test.

These are clearly not stellar offshoots. While "comfy chair" rolls off the tongue (and was even used in one of Monty Python's most famous sketches), when was the last time you actually used "comfy" or "pleasant" with a stool? I would venture to say: probably not at all.

I've been informed that "stool" comes from the French estale -- a piegon used to entice a hawk into a nest. This may have merged with the Germanic stall, or standing in place. I've also been told that the Old English "stol" means throne. But the word's Indo-European root suggests that its primary definition is a "place or thing that is standing."

And if "standing" is the primary meaning for a piece of furniture that's supposed to involve the human being sitting down, then the time has come to reassess the stool's value in a contemporary setting.

Essentially, we're talking about a sitting apparatus in which the body's carriage is projected upwards in a potentially nonergonomic position. For it is nearly impossible to slouch or even hunch over a bit without falling over to one side. The body must maintain an equilibrium, which involves the legs being placed delicately to each side of the stool, often folding uncomfortably under the crossbeams beneath the seat.

If a stool is placed in the center of a room or somewhere without any back support (such as a wall), then the spine remains exposed and the body is forced to adapt to a position that is contrary to the idea of sitting (a relaxing position), which often involves kicking up one's feet

Sitting in a stool can be compared unfavorably with the disappointing idea of making one's bed. Instead of a sustained position of comfort,

Posted by DrMabuse at April 12, 2005 05:17 PM