It wasn't quite twenty years ago when I first sat in the Most Comfortable Chair in the World. In late 1991, a couple friends and I moved into our first off-campus house. We'd grown tired of the babysitter RAs of the dorms (and the not so great, but strangely expensive, LAPO food). So to round out our four-bedroom place, we found a first year graduate student named Bob.

He brought sets of plates and bowls and this unassuming chair. The chair was between five and ten years old already, so it was broken in. But not broken. Not by a long shot.

We wouldn't last a year in the house, and neither Bob nor the original roommates lasted as long as I did. The landlord decided right after the end of school in 1992 she wanted to sell the house, breaking the lease and sending me (and my younger who had just moved in after graduating from high school) back to Clovis for our last summer home. But Bob couldn't fit the chair in his car when he moved out in May, so I inherited it and took it home for the summer.

Where it sat in one of the many upstairs rooms at our family house.

But when we went back to UNM in the late summer, the chair came with.

I think it was during our year living with my younger brother's high school friends that it became the Most Comfortable Chair in the world. You just sank into it. And in all the good ways that implies. At the same time, it wasn't the only piece of furniture where we lived, so it wasn't always holding one of our skinny asses.

I have no idea how long chairs are supposed to last. I've never had a proper chair from new to dead. Most of the time, we found our furniture second hand.

We took the chair with us when we were kicked out of the house in 1993. But when my younger brother and I moved to Florida for three months (it was supposed to be longer, but that's a whole other story), we couldn't fit it with our stuff. So we gave it to the drum house.

The drum house, which has its own storied history and is now owned by one of the drummers who lived there during his college years, became the chair's home for at least five years. After returning from Florida, we were told by drummer Ben that the chair would not be given back. Because, you see, it was the Most Comfortable...y'know.

But in the new millennium, we were told the chair was in the back garage, just sitting with a bunch of other stuff no one wanted. So we got the chair back.

It had been used by more than one cat as a primary residence, so we left it outside for a few days and vacuumed it a few times. It was not as pretty as it had been, so I threw a cheap "Mexican" rug from Wal-Mart over it. Still pretty comfortable. It had probably lost its title by this time, but nothing stays on top forever.

By the time I moved into my own apartment in 2008, the chair had seen better days. And most of those days had seen my ass in its cushions. I took the old couch (all the way from 1992) and the chair. While the couch was pretty much dead (there wasn't much support when you sat down, and I generally stayed away from it), the chair was still okay. I just had to throw a few pillows on it.

The couch would soon get dumped in favor of my brother's baby mama's least favorite (but still in good condition) cast off. But the chair was still my main sittin' place. It was regularly angled at the TV. But the constant use was becoming too much for it.

I had four different pillows on it at the end. And, even with this extra padding, it still sank pretty low. Support was not something it gave my body as I watched my stories. So, over my Independence Day break, I went shopping.

My new chair is a little wider. A little boxier, but still about the same weight. I can move it out of the way if I need to (something I tend to do when I have company).

It was delivered yesterday morning at 7:45. I'm still learning how to sit in it. But one has to break these things in. Maybe one day it will become Most Comfortable.

The former champion, two steps from dead, was delivered to a nearby apartment trash bin. It seemed small and defeated, like a lot of near dead things. But it had a good life, and so this is not a mourning, but a celebration.

Matt Worley realizes, at his advanced age, that even he has extra "pillows" in places he didn't previously.