The Bored Husband Chair
©2024, George J. Irwin. All rights reserved.

A small store in the business section of Belfast, Maine sells a wide range of items from clothing to gifts to food to trinkets to souvenirs, and, believe it or not, actual postcards, which people still do send to each other, various internet and social media venues aside. It has the unusual name of The Purple Baboon, which I suppose I could have asked about but didn’t.

Right outside the door of The Purple Baboon is a chair in the Adirondack style, but it’s not out of place on the Central Coast of Maine.

And right above that chair, mounted to the outside wall of the store, is a sign, which reads:

“The Bored Husbands Chair.”

Which is a clever marketing tactic! The shop’s proprietor clearly knows that the demographic skews heavily female and probably middle to upper class—it is located in a Maine Coast Tourist Destination—and therefore it’s not a bad idea to give the spouses who are, let us say, less interested, in browsing and selecting from the wide range of items available, a place to take a break. It both acknowledges and plays up the not untrue assertion that husbands don’t like to shop as much as their wives.

Make that “many” husbands, or even “most” husbands. But not “all” husbands.

I need to bring in a line from the standup comedy routine that became a hit Broadway show in 1995, called Defending the Caveman. Its creator Rob Becker described how many men go to the store: “We don’t shop, we hunt.” I think he’s absolutely right about this. There are certainly times when I am very focused on locating and purchasing a single item, as quickly and efficiently as possible. This is often when, as recently occurred, I have forgotten to pack said item in my luggage for a trip. Soon after arriving at our hotel, I discovered that although I thought I had packed t-shirts, I had only thought about packing t-shirts, and therefore in my bag there were not any t-shirts.

“I have to go hunt t-shirts,” I lamented to Colleen.

“I’ll go with you.”

And since we were in the vicinity of a branch of a family-owned old school department store chain, that’s where we headed. In a different branch of this same chain, we learned that shopping carts were still being called “buggies,” proving to us that a minimum of one local dialect term still survived in America. Naturally, I asked Colleen if she wanted a buggy for her shopping while I hunted t-shirts. Actually, I now ask her if she wants a buggy any time we go into any store that has them available. She took a buggy and headed for the Women’s section and I sped off on my hunt.

I returned a few minutes later to find Colleen had done some hunting of her own. That’s one of many things we have in common—we can both hunt. And we can also both shop, not looking for anything in particular but considering things that might work for one of us. And yes, we both shop for each other, usually when we’re together.

“I want to try these on,” Colleen said, holding up, in no particular order, a top, a dress and a pair of slacks.

“Cool.”

So we located the nearest Fitting Room—an outdated term to be sure because there is almost never anyone who helps “fit” you into anything these days.

“Look, dear,” Colleen pointed out, “a Bored Husband Chair.” She motioned in the direction of a place to sit between the entrance to the Fitting Room and the cashier’s station. The cashier who was on duty at the time laughed.

In addition to the low prices, generally good selection and rather hip soundtrack that were features of this particular department store chain, this was another thing they’d become known for, at least with us: at least one and sometimes two or three chairs for people to sit while waiting for whoever they were accompanying to try on clothes. I don’t think these were intended exclusively for male spouses, but we did apply the name that we’d seen at The Purple Baboon.

The store wasn’t terribly busy so I struck up a conversation with the cashier and related the story of how we had come across our first Bored Husband Chair.

“I think it’s great that you go with your wife to shop,” the cashier remarked.

“Sometimes, to hunt.”

The cashier laughed.

“It’s a long story.”

But the cashier was right about it being great to be able, and willing, to visit department stores together. Many, or perhaps most, couples do not. We enjoy it. It’s part of our being a team.

Colleen was out of the Fitting Room before I got comfortable in the Bored Husband Chair. Unfortunately, all three items she selected looked better on the rack than they did on her, so we wouldn’t be buying anything besides the t-shirts on this trip. The cashier rung up the sale just as another couple approached the Fitting Room. The woman had a buggy full of clothes to try on. The man had a pained expression on his face.

Colleen motioned to where the man could sit and invited, “We saved the Bored Husband Chair for you.”

“The what?”

They both laughed.

And that was the idea.

...