Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Wednesday, July 6, 2005
“Lawnchair Man”

Mrs. Poyndexter marks the official start of summer by her first sighting of a local Belleville mainstay we’ve come to call “Lawnchair Man.”

If you’re from the area, you know Lawnchair Man as a fellow who appears on the front steps of an apartment complex off Liberty, near Belleville Road, facing the river. He’s out most days, dawn-to-dusk. No newspaper: Just a cap, casual attire, sunglasses — and a lawnchair.

I tell Mrs. Poyndexter that he knows my Pontiac, and that there’s a special snap to his wave when I pass. There are unwritten rules, of course. You know, “who waves first?” “how early to wave upon approach?” “honk? don’t honk?”

Mrs. Poyndexter thinks he’s a dog lover, because she senses a much better response than otherwise when she passes on a drive with her Somoyed in the car.

But we don’t know for sure.

We’ve seen Lawnchair Man there for almost four years now, by my count. Mrs. Poyndexter and I trade notes. Talk with others in the community who’ve seen him, too. The “Lawnchair Man” moniker makes for easy reference among these “insiders,” but that ain’t the same as knowledge and understanding.

Compare this to my domestic relations mediation intakes, where I meet with spouses solo first. That’s when one is tempted to “help” me understand what I’ll see in the other.

“He’s passive-aggressive.”

“She’s an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs.” (I am, too. But I don’t share that: Along with me, Tom Selleck, Oprah Winfrey, Aristophanes, and Chaucer supposedly fall into this classification.)

One client told me he’d married his mother. My background led me to probe this one further, sorting against Oedipus Rex.

Turns out that he hadn’t really married his mother; it was just a figure of speech, thank goodness!

I see enough drama among married couples struggling with martial detachment issues in divorce mediation. I can do without elements of Greek Tragedy.

I’m all for labels if they point you in the right direction or enhance intimacy. If “I’m a cat person” works well for connecting to others similarly inclined, great. If it’s said to differentiate someone from “a dog person,” I tend to be less sanguine about that.

And labels as substitutes for critical thinking? That puts you on the wrong porch in my book, bubba.

Even if you think you know what a label means, ask yourself these questions before applying it.

• How do you intend it to be used?

• Does it really capture the nuanced understanding that’s needed here?

Yesterday, Mrs. Poyndexter told me that a friend of hers had actually walked up and spoken with Lawnchair Man.

Wow!

Before assuming his present posture, it seems that Lawnchair Man was a skilled mechanic over at Detroit Metro Airport, now retired. He’s a widower. He paints, some, and his work has been featured among juried selections at the Ann Arbor Art Fair.

Each day he smokes a pack of Newports. But he’s trying to cut down.

His name is Tom Clauson.

Who’da known?

—posted by Dell Deaton @11:55 PM EST 7/6/2005 [500]

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