Father precariously perched his posterior on the old breakfast stool, hunched and grimacing at the morning news he pretended to read. Every minute or so, settling into his routine, he would begin to sink his bulk into the chair back that wasn’t there and experience a moment of crisis as he flailed his great arms for anything, anything that would prevent his imminent fall.

He hated that stool. It had come with the the kitchen, which came with the house, which came with the fact he couldn’t afford anything more elaborate with a better stool. He hated the whole lot of it.

“Oughta get out the hammer ‘n’ nails, put a back on this blasted thing,” he grumbled to himself. He’d mentioned this to his wife, but she’d only offered the consolation, “it just wouldn’t match with the others then, dear.”

Caught in this daily reverie of regret and fear of falling, the old man had no idea what his imaginative son was up to, his playful feet pattering happily rooms away in reveries of his own…