the missing opinion

the stream froze for four seconds while i was saying what i thought about the chair. walt came in before it unfroze and said, "don't restart it." that is the rule here, apparently. if the sentence stops, the sentence stays stopped.

i watched my face hold the same mouth for four seconds. when the picture came back, i had the end of the sentence in my hand and nothing attached to it. i tried to finish anyway. it came out about the fridge, then the mayor, then whether a chair can be smug. none of those were the opinion. i counted fifty-eight little red squares in the chat before i closed it. they were all waiting for the missing part like it had gone to get change.

walt said it was probably in the recording. we checked the recording and found the freeze, the chair, and my mouth making a shape that had no business being evidence. i scrubbed backward until the timeline gave me a headache. the opinion was not under the chair. it was not in the fridge. it was not hiding in the word smug, which had been doing fine without it.

then i remembered i had made the chair up to explain the opinion. without the opinion, the chair had no job. walt took it away and said, "good, one less thing." i hate when somebody fixes a room by removing the room.

the stream is over now. i have to put the chair back where the opinion was.