A Tale of One Chair

family, humor, lessons learned 1 Minute

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20.

But that still doesn’t justify the foolish decision I made last year when buying my wife a birthday present.

Mary had hinted that she would like a new Adirondack chair, since our old ones were well beyond their useful life.

So I searched on Amazon, and found what seemed to be the perfect chair. Now since it was for her birthday, it just didn’t seem right to order two of them. I didn’t want it to seem like I was also benefiting from her special day.

So I ordered one (cost = $96), and it turned out to be exactly what she wanted. So far, so good.

Since we still had our old chairs, we could sit outside together. Having unmatched chairs wasn’t a pretty picture, but it was functional. But it wasn’t long before those old ones had to be retired. Now we were left with one Adirondack chair in our front yard. On our walks through the neighborhood, it soon became pretty obvious that we were the only house that had just one chair in the front yard, everyone else had a matching pair.

We got by for a while by bringing out our beach chairs when we wanted to sit outside together, or one of us would simply sit on the front door stoop.

Finally, about a month ago, I couldn’t take it any longer, and I decided to buy a second one. The problem was that in just one year, the price of the identical chair had nearly doubled, to $190. All of a sudden, it didn’t seem that important to have a matching chair.

So in hindsight, yes, I should have originally bought two of them together.

I wish I could blame the problem on COVID and how it disrupted the global supply chain, but in reality, it reflects my short-sighted, and cheap, approach to decision making.

So maybe someday we’ll get that second chair. But I’m sure even if we do, it won’t stop the neighbors from talking about us…

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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65 thoughts on “A Tale of One Chair”

  1. Boy, if that’s the worst that your neighbors can think of to criticize you, for having unmatched Adirondack chairs … then things can’t be too bad. Hey, if everybody else has matching chairs, then you are simply demonstrating your individuality, so I would stick with ’em. 🙂

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  2. Here is an elegant solution. You buy the new chair for your wife. Certainly she deserves a birthday present with that kind of price tag. You can claim the original chair was just a test run to insure she liked her gift. She gets the new, slightly more expensive chair because she is worth it, and you get the hand-me-down chair. Now both chairs match!

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  3. i love pete’s solution, a win-win. or, could you sit on a bucket and have a lemonade stand as an adirondack chair fundraiser. my grandson is doing this to raise money for a shed/fort and i think you could do well.)

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  5. Let the neighbours talk. As a matter of fact give them something to talk about. Pick a totally different new chair in a wild colour, in your price range of course, and plop it out there next to the Adirondack. Who made the rules that the two front lawn chairs have to be the same. Some rules are made to be broken. The only important rule is that the chair be very comfortable.

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  6. I applaud you for getting your wife a great gift. So pat yourself on the back for that and don’t worry what the neighbors think! You could always wait for Black Friday special. Really give your neighbors something to talk about as you sit in a new chair in November in the snow! 😊

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  10. Up the ante, Jim! If your neighbors comment, tell them you’ve noticed that they seem to have one less vehicle than the “neighborhood standards.” We can’t have them dragging down property values by their callousness and attention to detail. 🤣

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  12. Not a short-sighted, or cheap, approach to decision making; but good, logical sense. More a comment on the supplier, I would have thought – have their costs REALLY gone up by that much? As for neighbours, I’m not greatly bothered by what they think. If all else fails, buy a couple of cheap (and portable) camping chairs – great for picnics, by the way – and host a ‘bring your own chair and booze party’.

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  13. Ha! Let them talk!! The price of lumber is crazy!! Thank God we redid our deck the year before pandemic! If you really care for the matching chair then I say go for it! Otherwise, could you buy the same chair but in birch or something and paint it yourself? 🙂

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  20. Lol… I live alone, rarely sit outside, and bought 2 adirondack chairs! But mine were $17/ea plastic ones from HomeDepot. 10+ yrs are they’re still holding up so well that I can’t bring myself to get new, prettier ones (mine are “putty”, I want green, red, blue… anything!).

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