You all know her: the free spirit who can’t be restrained by society’s expectations of which patterns go together or what parts of a room are for sitting on. I’m talking about that quirky gal whose vibrant, off-filter energy lights up any space, and who sits on the floor even when there’s an available chair, and guess what? I’m her. And I’m not apologizing for it, either.
My journey to becoming the quirky floor girl started like so many floor-sitters’ do, by being small for my age. I can’t explain the exact mechanics of the petite-to-floor-sitting pipeline — it might be because we’re already closer to the ground, or it might be because people are always insisting there’s room for us on full couches since we’re small, and that’s a lot of pressure to put on a person — but whatever the case, one day I sat my small ass down on the floor of a friend’s living room and I realized, I like it here.
Sitting on the floor shows the world that I’m always ready to move, unafraid of going against the grain, and have good hip flexibility, and these are all important qualities to me. I really don’t care about any other benefits that sitting in a chair would provide.
In the years since I first plopped down crisscross applesauce on the hardwood, I’ve never looked back. I mean, there was a brief moment in college where I questioned my identity because sitting on the floor is really prevalent in dorm life; I actually started wearing a bowler hat all the time because I was like, “I need something,” but I never really felt like I was pulling it off. Anyway, once people started moving off-campus, most of them invested in furniture that I could more noticeably refuse to sit on.
As is common of my ilk, I’ve experimented with sitting on countertops, arms of chairs, and doing that thing where I insist someone much larger than me sit on my lap, but I know for sure my denial of traditional seating isn’t a phase. Taking up a whole chair just feels obtrusive and needy. Plus, I like to sit in the dead center of the room, yes, even if it’s a christening or a funeral. It’s just part of who I am.
So that’s how I became the idiosyncratic cutie who sits on the floor even when there’s a chair available. And if you think this quality is annoying or attention-seeking, I don’t care because I’m not hurting anyone and my posture is amazing.
