What Are They Thinking?

The Wife made a purchase this weekend. She bought some new deck furniture. Nothing super fancy, mind you: a few Adirondack chairs (plastic) and a couple of little deck tables for setting drinks on. The Adirondacks are nice because they have a built-in lumbar support, so they are more comfortable than their straight-backed counterparts.

They weren’t on the deck 24-hours before the kids got together and graffiti’d them.

The only saving grace here is… well… there is no saving grace. I mean, the boy wrote names on the chairs in an attempt at assigning seating so it’s not like we have gang-banger Adirondack chairs on the deck, or even something with a nice landscape. Rather, we have chairs with names on them because, apparently in the boy’s Universe, it made sense.

The Wife was none too pleased with the gesture. Nor was I, though I wasn’t as upset as the Wife. When I heard, my first question was “Where did you write the names?” hoping he’d labeled the underside.

No such luck- he put it prominently on the front of the backrest.

My next question was “With what did you write it?” hoping it could be washed off.

No such luck- he wrote it with a Sharpie.

They tried to scrub it off, but their efforts were in vain.

I never really got a satisfactory explanation for why he did it. He claims it was because there was one for each of us- a very literal translation. It didn’t occur to him that “one for each of us” might just mean there was the same number of chairs as family members and we could use whichever one we sat our derriere’s into.

The boy too, seemed perplexed. To him, it was the most obvious thing in the world. He was doing us a favor. That we were a bit upset with his lack of judgment was his own mystery to contemplate. Assigned seating! No fighting over chairs! What’s not to like?

But why those chairs? He hasn’t done that with other chairs in the house. He hasn’t even mentioned it. There’s no assigned seating anywhere else in the house, though we all have our go-to spots. Was this part of a larger plan? If it had gone over well, would he be Sharpie-ing up the house? Who gets what toilet? Would we have assigned walking paths?

Perhaps it’s best to not think about it. He did it. It was a mistake. Won’t happen again. Maybe we can laugh about it later.

Maybe.