How to Fix a Broken Chair

Fiction, sort of...

How to fix a broken chair

If none of this is my fault, then why am I being punished? It’s not my fault who my parents are, or that they can’t just get along and do what parents are supposed to do. No, they get to just go ahead, messing up however they want, but I get shipped out and sent to people that I don’t even know. I wanted to go live with Uncle Phil, but he was ‘too busy’. Thanks for nothing Uncle Phil.

Nobody would have me. Nobody wants me. Well, I’m sixteen, and I can take care of myself. But no, the geniuses at Family Services say I’m too young, like they’d know. So now, here I am, with these old people that came out of nowhere and I guess they’re going to ‘fix’ me. Well, I’m not broken. Just leave me alone.

They say things are my fault. That I should be responsible. Yeah, like Mom and Dad have been responsible to me. Screw all of them. I’ll do what I want. The only one watching out for me is me.

When I get into fights, why am I the only one who gets punished? It’s the other guys who pick the fights. They have it coming. But no, it’s all my fault. I’m supposed to report them to ‘the authorities’ when they pick on me. Well, I reported it to ‘the authorities’, to Mr. Williams as well as Ms. Butler. They tell me they’re looking into it. Yeah, everybody’s looking into things. Nobody finds anything.

Now I’m supposed to live with these old people, Connie and Bob Johnson. They might as well be from another planet. Maybe they are. How would I know? I just got stuck here, in the middle of nowhere. This might as well be another planet.

OK, so I broke the chair. Big damn deal. It was old anyway. If they think I’m going to sit all nice and obedient, they can kiss my ass. I didn’t ask to be here, and I don’t have to follow their rules. If they don’t like how I act, they can just kick me out. I’ll be fine.

So, Bob hauls me down to the basement. OK, fine. Whatever. What’s he gonna do that I can’t take?

There’s the chair, on his workbench. I’ve never been down here before. I didn’t know he had a workshop, or anything.

“You broke it, you fix it,” said Bob.

“I don’t know how, I said.”

“Then you’ll learn. I’ll help you.”

My first thought was to tell him what he could do with his broken chair. But for some reason, I didn’t. He treats me different than the others, and I think I like it. In a way. Still, he’s just an old man who has no idea what goes on in the real world.

“Any thoughts on how you should proceed?” He nodded toward the chair.

I looked at it, and then I looked back at Bob. “I told you I don’t know how to fix anything. I must have missed that class at school.”

“Then before you attempt to fix it, you consider the possibilities. The answers won’t just jump into your head. You’ll have to think your way through.”

He looked at me in a funny way. It wasn’t mean. And it wasn’t that stupid “we’re here to help’ look that I get from the teachers and the counselors. Honestly, I’ve never seen that look before. I didn’t know what to do about it.

I looked at the chair. One of the legs was broken in two, and the rungs were pulled apart away from it. Could I nail it back together? I’m not sure how I would have gotten nails to hold the broken leg. And it occurred to me that the chair hadn’t been nailed together in the first place, so maybe nails weren’t the answer. I think they use glue.

“Maybe it could be glued back together,” I said.

“Well, let’s take a closer look, and think about it. The rungs were glued originally, so it would seem that regluing them would work. But the leg itself is broken. Glue would stick it back together, but would it hold? Would it be strong enough to sit on and be used for years to come?”

I don’t know why I was going along with this. It’s his damned chair, and it wouldn’t be broken if they hadn’t made me be here.

“I don’t know if the glue would hold. I’ve never used glue. I have no way of knowing.”

“There’s no harm in not knowing. One of the most important things you can do is recognize what you don’t know. That’s the first step in every solution.”

Bob looked at me, asking me with his eyes if I understood. I guess I answered yes with my own eyes.

“Have you ever seen a repaired chair, one with a leg that had been repaired?”

Was he kidding? I thought you just threw things out when they broke. “No,” was all I said.

“Do you know anyone who might have an answer, some advice?”

“I suppose you do, right?”

Bob smiled. “Right. You’re not the first person to break a chair. And what’s the first step in solving any problem?”

I guess I was catching on. “Recognize what you don’t know”

“Good! See, you already know the first step in repairing a chair. What do you suppose the second step is?”

I looked again at the chair. At the broken leg. Nails made no sense, even if it was the first obvious idea. Glue apparently would not work, according to Bob. What second step? Then, I thought I knew. “Get advice from people who have done it before?”

“Great! You’re learning fast!”

“And you’ve told me you’ve repaired chairs before.”

“I have. And based on my experience, the leg will need to be replaced. And then we reglue everything. I happen to have the wood that we’ll need, and the tools and machines that we’ll need to do it. Are you up for it?”

I didn’t think about it so hard then, but now I can look back and see. Somehow, with all the rebellion and with all the rejecting and being rejected, with all my self-defense, Bob easily worked his way inside my head. I think still about what makes the difference. I don’t have the answers. We repaired the chair. I saw in a new light that actions have consequences, and that you should think about the consequences before you take the actions. I’ve learned that, when you do this, you can at least mostly control your life, instead of others controlling it for you. If I may borrow from a Jewish tradition; that day, in Bob’s workshop, under Bob’s tutelage, I became a man.

Now, I stand before you, in this celebration of Bob’s life, and declare that only his body has gone. His soul and his spirit live on in all of us. Our bodies are made of dust, and return to dust. But not our spirits. They are forever, if we will but tend to them. God bless you, Bob. Your spirit lives in my heart forever.

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