Autism, Comfy Chairs, and Correctional Facilities

 My autistic son Joe has been having a hard time dealing with the pandemic lockdown--as have we all, of course--but he's having an even harder time dealing with the "Almost Over" aspect of it. It's the inverse of the Since I Gave Up Hope I Feel Much Better maxim. 

So I've been trying various things to help him deal with the frustration engendered by anticipation: long walks, stationary bike rides, dumbbell exercises, yoga, tai chi, dancing, video games, movies, movie and tv series, changing his medications (with doctor supervision), punching bag, weighted blanket, sensory brushing therapy, loud music, soft music, long read-aloud-from-books sessions. Etcetera. Some of it has helped, some of it it's hard to tell. Some of it has been a waste of time and money.

Today I thought, I wonder if he'd like to have a rocking chair? (Because it's fairly common for autistic folks to like rocking motion.) But not an old person's rocking chair, something cool...like a gamer's chair. They rock, right? (I mean that literally literally, not adjectivally.)

And since I have abandoned Amazon ("My name is Brother K, and it's been 3 months since my last Amazon purchase."), I headed over to Walmart to see what I could find.

I found this with minimal effort:

And it looked like the ticket, really. But I wanted something slightly better, so I looked some more...and found this:

...which looked even cooler. I also found a different variation of the above which was equipped with Bluetooth speakers, which might be a nice upgrade. Strangely, it was $20 cheaper. 

So that's probably what's going to happen...though I'll do a more thorough check on it before I throw the money down.

After I'd found the above, though, I thought that maybe I should cast my net wider and perhaps benefit from the experience of others, so I Googled "home furniture for autistic adults," and got this:

Well...I, for one, wanted to know what "Gamer's Chair" goes for $918. So I clicked on that, only to find...

Hmpf. Well...there are a lot of things to say about that, but I think I'll let you say them for yourself. Meanwhile, though, I have to think that you sure have to be careful about buying stuff, don't you? Unless, of course, $918 is sofa change to you.

P.S. If you have any advice re: gaming chairs, hit me back in the comments section asap.