Mr. Chair Man

"What the heck were you thinking?" he asked. Maybe if we'd all had plush, high-backed judicial chairs three or four feet off the ground our thought process would have been more elevated.

Well, here were some of the most elevated fanny-rests in the world, a tantalizing few feet away. The courtroom is packed with tourists, and a docent is racing through an entertaining history of the bench, throwing in little asides about Honduran mahogany and how the nine judges can't all have gavels or it would be like a wild game of Whac-a-Mole up there.

I wait for a breath, raise my hand and ask if, before we adjourn, I could sit in one of the justices' chairs?

"No," the docent replies, quicker than I did the last time someone asked if I wanted a United Way contribution taken directly out of my paycheck.

"But I will tell you the chairs are made right here in the basement," he says. "And they're all identical. Basically, they just go up and down. And some have a little reclinability. A couple of the justices like to recline."

My guess is that Roberts and Breyer are the recliners, but that's the last thing on my mind as I race to the basement in search of a lone carpenter hammering out the next batch of Supreme Court chairs. Maybe he'd let me sit in one, even if it's just in the skeletal stage -- all wood and no upholstery.

There's not so much as the sound of a screw turning downstairs, but I hear the sizzle of a deep fryer and discover the well-hidden Supreme Court Cafe and the best $2.75 BLT I've ever come across. I don't care where you work in the District, it's worth climbing every one of the 10,000 steps out front.

* * *

"I am, I said, to no one there. And no one heard at all, not even the chair."

-- Neil Diamond

Live free or die.

I'm roaming the halls of the Senate office buildings looking for a senator from the great state of New Hampshire. Every time I check with a Senate staff member, I get a dumbfounded look and: "So, you want to actually sit in the senator's chair? In the Senate chamber? I don't know if that can be done."