Tables and chairs
Or
"How to be cured from an obsessive compulsive disorder"

Arny was the nostalgic type. He didn't just cling to the past, he actually
lived the past. All he did, was for the sake of the nostalgia.
For him, the future's role was limited only as a comfortable
observation point Into the past. That's all.
Everything made him nostalgic, He never did anything unless he knew
this action would drive him, in the future, to wallow in it's memory.
One thing he was really obsessive about: Arny fell in love very easily.
Two or three dates with a woman were enough to give him enormous happiness.
At the third meeting he already imposed one issue to the conversation: a nice,
sticky memory of their first date (which consequently caused his women to
abandon him).
But Arny didn't give-up, there are no women, but there is always nostalgia:
after each date he used to come to the first dating place (which were
always coffee-shops), asked for the owner and after a short bargaining
he acquired the table and the two chairs on which they sat.
Thus, in the ending of each first date, when they left the coffee-shop,
he looked back and memorized the exact location of their table and chairs.
The coffee-shops owners usually agreed to sell the set for few
hundreds dollars.
Both parties were content.
So, every month or two, another set of table and two chairs were added
to his collection, in his nice back yard.
At the bottom of each table he put a tag which contained the following details:
- The name of the girl
- The date and time
- The name of the coffee-shop
- What they wore
- The main subjects of their conversation

Even the location of the tables and chairs in his back yard was
determine by strict rules:
Being an ex-warehouse guy in the army, he placed the sets according to the
"last in, last in the line" method.
Every evening, after getting home from work, he sat on a random chair,
rested his elbows on the matching table (from the same set) and recalled the
conversation with the woman who he spent a lovely evening with.
One afternoon, when getting out of work, he decided to take a mild
exercise and skip the bus: he will walk home.
After ten minutes of walking he reached the coffee-house in which he
sat with date number 8. Arny stopped and gazed, nostalgically, through the
wide glass. It was early and the place was closed. Only the cleaner was
there, wiping the parquet floor. Arny looked around, his eyes looked at
the far corner and suddenly he felt a huge shock: all the tables and chairs
were piled-up in the corner, so it would be easier to clean...
In his stupidity he didn't realize it when he came a day or two after,
in order to acquire the same table and chairs he sat on..
Arny just couldn't bring himself to think what happened to the table and
chairs after working hours. In his blind love for the past, he couldn't bring
himself to understand that there were changes in the nostalgic scene he
created to himself.
Suddenly he lost his big treasure: his experiences.
He rushed home, got in and threw, with rage, all his tables and chairs
behind his fence, then, he put them on fire.
After calming down, he pulled-out a note from his pocket, a note that he
received from a friend, with a telephone number of a woman. He picked up
the phone, dialed the number, and after a short and pleasant chat
they set a date.
"What will we do tonight?" she asked, and Arny replayed, without hesitation: "We'll
go to the movies, we'll sit in the cinema and see a movie!"

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