That One Chair

HUMOUR

By: Ahsan Ayub, Calgary Alberta

Does anyone else have that one seat at the dining table or one place on the couch that is simply “theirs”, unconditionally? If you do (which, of course you do), you know how much it hurts when somebody takes that seat and wouldn’t give it up! A couple of weeks ago, my sister and I were fighting over something trivial (like siblings do) just before dinner. To get back at me, she goes and sits on my chair and refuses to give it up. Well, okay, it hurt but I forgive her because I’m that awesome. After dinner, we go up to the bonus room to watch the next episode of Ertugrul (yes, we’re cool! But we watch the Urdu -dubbed, PTV version, so I guess we’re not that cool), and my sister who still obviously hasn’t moved on, goes and sits on my place at the couch. I still don’t let it bring me down too much. It was Friday evening, and it was only 8, so our family decided to go grab some ice cream from the Village (we’re hip, too!). You guessed it! She took my seat in the car and doesn’t give it up. This pretty much does it! I didn’t enjoy a single lick of my usually heavenly Melted Chocolate ice cream. WORST DAY EVER!

So by this point, you’re probably thinking “Stop being so petty, Mr. Writer-Man”, and to that, my reply is “no”. That was my chair on the dining table, my place on the couch, and my seat in the car, and that’s that. Who said I had to have rational and logical preferences? The aforementioned psychopathic sister of mine often says “I don’t see your name on it!” So now I carry a stack of Post-It notes and a marker so I can always have my name on my chair.

Obviously a lot of what I wrote is exaggerated for effect (or is it? ), but one starts to wonder: Why do we associate so much value to trivial things and let them affect our lives so much? (This is where this article changes genres from ‘humour’ to ‘philosophy’). Could it be because there are so many uncontrollable factors in our lives that applying this over-exaggerated significance to small things gives us a semblance of control over our lives? Maybe we could get some input from one of the psychiatrist uncles in the community…. Or is there another, simpler theory to explain such possessiveness like:

IT IS MY CHAIR AND IT NEEDS TO BE LEFT ALONE!