If I’m not mistaken, you’re in my seat
From La-Z-Boys to deck chairs: it’s all about rage
Road rage has been well documented — less so the turf wars that erupt over chairs. When I was young, I thought my father was the only person in the world with his own designated chair, which stayed empty even when he was at work. So you could have hit me with a Naugahyde La-Z-Boy the first time I saw Archie Bunker on All in the Family.
But Archie and my dad aren’t the only ones who exhibit proprietorial behaviour over seating. Take my husband — please.
For 17 years or so I’ve suffered from a bad back, which has meant I’ve dutifully carried around a pillow or an Obusforme when I might have to sit on a hard chair in a public place.
One day Allan and I decided to buy some lawn furniture that I’d find comfortable. Allan spotted a large padded rocking chair. “ That’s for you, my beauty,” he said, and bought it on the spot.
But guess who uses it? It doesn’t matter who’s with him, whether it’s important company or just the family, it has become Grampa’s backyard chair. Occasionally, I shame him in front of company by reminding him why we bought the chair in the first place.
Allan, Paxy (our marmalade poodle) and I also fight over the sofa in the sunny nook in the living room. During the day, Paxy usually gets first dibs. It’s Allan’s turn when he gets home. And then me. None of us likes sharing it with the others. Paxy holds on as long as she can but when our feet land on her turf she runs off to a sofa near the front window so she can verbally abuse passersby.
I had assumed that a favourite chair or sofa was a weakness of my generation. Not at all. My son-in-law has his favourite chair for watching TV. My grandchildren must scoot off it as soon as he enters the room.
The choice place to park yourself is still a big issue when you stay at a hotel or go on a cruise. My daughter told me that guests were almost in tears over which lounge chair was whose when she stayed at a hotel in Paradise Island in Jamaica. “I’ll never go back there again,” she says.
Many years ago, Allan, David T.- E. ( a friend from Oxford with a double-barrelled surname) and I went third class on a big old tub called the S. S. Jerusalem on a five-day voyage from Marseille to Haifa. There were about 1,000 Jews on the former refugee boat, plus one Anglican — David.
Naturally, there were more people than deck chairs, so the moment you left your deck chair at least a dozen people were waiting to take it over. Some held their deck chairs hostage, never leaving them for an instant, even at night.
This I could understand, because the sleeping arrangements were peculiar. The men and women were separated, and I had to sleep with three other women in a kind of a female mini-ward.
Allan and David expected they’d have to sleep in another ward with two other men. But the purser split them up, insisting that David sleep in the same room as three bearded Orthodox Jews in full religious regalia — fur hats, long gabardine coats and fringes hanging from their prayer shawls. David said he didn’t mind because he wanted to find out what they wore underneath during the sweltering heat.
In the meantime, the women, including me, were making a fuss because one of our roommates had smuggled in her 14-year-old son so they could share a bed. No one suspected her of incest because we knew it was a financial problem. She hadn’t the money to pay for a bed for her son in the men’s dorm. “Don’t worry,” the mother said to the other women. “He won’t look when you get undressed. He doesn’t know anything.”
Which explains why deck chairs were important on this voyage. Blows were exchanged because there were no procedural rules governing behaviour. Once you got up from your deck chair it was lost forever. And, if you did manage to sit down on an empty chair at midday, several people would inevitably come by and accuse you of theft.
Based on this experience, I’d always thought lounge-chair rage existed only in the old days among poor refugees settling in Israel.
But last week we stayed at a very comfortable hotel in Chatham on Cape Cod. It was a large, old- fashioned shingled structure with a big balcony filled with wicker chairs. Sitting, as I observed earlier, is not my favourite activity — I prefer to walk about or recline. Fortunately, amongst the wicker, we spotted two empty lounge chairs on which we could read lying down (my favourite sport). This was midweek and the hotel wasn’t full. So we grabbed our books and newspapers and spent a happy morning there, caressed by sea breezes. That was the first and last time we got those chairs.
The hotel was soon filled with prosperous white-bread middleclass Americans. A couple of them, armed with cellphones, computers and BlackBerrys, took over the chairs at 7 a.m. the next day and stayed until dusk.
When they went for lunch, they left the laptop on one chair and their jackets on the other — even more effective than a sign saying Reserved.
They stayed there for three days, until two canny old ladies managed to release the hostage chairs. The laptop and BlackBerrys were dumped on tables. Knitting needles and Nora Roberts novels took their place. We didn’t dare remove them.