My Desk

This last year, when I made up my mind that I would not be attending graduate school until the fall of 2011, I realized that if I hoped to use my room as a work space, I would need to purchase a desk in order to have space enough for my computer and my papers and work and so on. I didn't feel the need to buy a desk chair and consequently I now sit on an uncomfortable old bar stool with wobbly legs that has less surface area on it than the black banana seat on my mom's now-retired one-speed, maroon-colored, chrome-fendered bicycle that was once in style approximately one hundred and sixty-seven years, five months, and twenty-three days ago this June 14 (give or take a day or twenty).

My desk is made of cherry wood and despite the fact that it was made in China, it manages to sustain all of the junk I unfailingly place upon it. I don't dust it often enough, which has just been reaffirmed to me as I seconds ago ran my finger across the interior of the cubby-holes where I keep all of my scratch and copy paper, be it lined, plain white, or eggshell, the latter of which I like to use for resumes. I blow away some of the dust particles, and they scamper.

But my desk bears more than paper and dust. In the upper left pigeon-hole, I see two outdated and somewhat wrinkled wallet-sized photos of my nephews which I hang onto despite the fact that they have survived at least two trips through the washing machine. Beneath them, I have an old pen (lacking in ink and certainly meriting retirement), which I have obviously chewed on once or twice during a moments of pensive concentration; a partial tube of Icy Hot (which I keep around in case my tempermental wrist decides to flare up); a yellow-and-red tube, with a rounded red cap, of original Carmex moisturizing lip balm, a small Christmas present from my ever practical mum; and a partial set of hardly used calligraphy pens which I won in a poetry contest in the fall of 2009 and hope to someday learn to use (If I don't, well, at least they'll never run out of ink as my other pen has). In front of me, I see a container of Right Guard Total Defense with an orange and gray exterior; a partial bottle of White-Out, whose cap is now permanently affixed to the container as I have carelessly allowed a large amount of the liquid to build and harden, little by litte, over a long period of time; and two first-class Liberty Bell stamps, left over from a packet of twenty.

I know what you're thinking now. You must be saying, I thought you said you bought your desk for work; it sounds as though you use it as a dump heap that the Grinch himself might frolic in.

But you would be wrong.

Okay, you're right, but only partially. My desk does indeed serve as a home for all sorts of rubbish. But that's not why I like it as much as I do, although that is certainly part of its charm. Also, I like it because it functions as a halfway house for all of my research and leisure reading material. You see, books need somewhere to stay while they aren't on the shelf. Oh, I know, I could put them back on the shelf when I'm not reading them. However, I find it annoying to have to go all the way to my shelves, one of which is barely an arm's length from my bar stool, to gather up all forty-seven volumes I happen to be pouring over at the same moment. So, instead of leading me into the valley of the shadow of irritation and temporary distress, my desk bears the burden for me by functioning as an extension of my library. You might call it an over-sized bookbag with four legs and no pockets. No monogrammed initials either.

To tell you the truth, at this very moment, my desk, my brave strong desk, is housing thirty-three separate volumes of classic literature and literary theory, not to mention a stack of research essays, all of which have effectively forced me to shift three Harry Potter books to an old chair in the corner for want of more surface area. By the way, this is the first time I have attempted to read the Harry Potter series and I have been so into them that I have read volumes 2-4 in the last thirty-hours. Pretty good, I would say, though I am certain there are those out there, certain unnamed speed readers, who have read them faster and with greater passion than I. However, to discuss such individuals, who are unknown to me and possibly to you is obviously outside the scope of this post because, after all, we were discussing my desk and not the Gryffindoor and/or Slytherin (no one really cares about Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw) adherents who have possibly learned to speak a dialect of Parseltongue and like to spend their time dreaming of flying among the clouds on hippogriffs or studying to become Animagi.

Ultimately though, I like my desk mostly because of its versatility and the amount of wear it takes. A desk, as I have found, is possibly the most versatile piece of furniture one can possess. It is bookshelf, wastebasket, trash compactor, breakfast table, lunch table, dinner table, work station, and time-teller (only because I keep my bell curve clock on it, which also needs dusting and whose battery is currently too weak to allow the seconds hand to ascend after the first half-minute has passed]). I have written two books, multiple essays, and innumerable poems at it. To use the words of Rat from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind and the Willows in mirrored application, it's my desk and I don't want any other. "Lord! the times we've had together."

Currently, I can tell that you are probably comparing me to that nut job in You've Got Mail, "the world's greatest living expert on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg," the guy who's is "so in love with his typewriter," but this judgment is unfair. I am not enamored by my desk; however, you must realize something: when you spend a lot of time with something, you tend to get attached to it and mindful of all of the things it does. But enough about inanimate objects; let's talk about people because people are more important than things. Perhaps some of us are not mindful enough of the people in our lives who do more for us than any others. These lovely folks simply carry on in their own way, doing the things they do because, well, it's what they do (kind of like house-elves). They do not ask for recognition because charity does not beg for reciprocation; however, that they deserve our thanks is beyond our pitiful power to deny.