We line up like this during operating hours for customers and also for the occasional photographer who thinks that our geometric lines, if extended, are a textbook example of vanishing-point perspective (whatever that is). We stools and pendent lights
(1) have never owned a textbook, and (2) think occasional photographers should get a life.

After hours, though, this place is ours, and any point of lining up vanishes. We stools disconnect ourselves from our floor bolts, and the lights lower themselves so we can unhook them from their wires.

And then the fun begins.

At first, the lights are sideline spectators while we zoom around the floor playing a high-octane version of bumper cars. We don’t actually have bumpers though, so we have to be careful no one gets damaged. We don’t want the owners to replace any one of us with a new stool.

The lights have begged us to let them be bumper cars too, but we point out that a hard stool careening into a light would send glass flying everywhere. Then the owners, after wondering how one of the lights got shattered overnight, would bring in a new light that could possibly be a spy. (Some outsiders you can trust, and some, sadly, you just can’t.)

We do let the lights join in the remainder of the fun. There’s the nightly conga line, where the lights can slip in anywhere. We don’t have any music, so we all chant, “da-da-da-da-da-DA!
da-da-da-da-da-DA! da-da-da-da-da-DA! (straight-up congalese). Inevitably, we all end up laughing so hard we’re rolling on the floor (stools watching out for the lights).

What we do the rest of the night depends on a majority vote. It might be “stools vs. lights” in a game of trivia, “stack the stools” (seeing which team can reach the ceiling first), “hide and seek” (the poor lights are found right away), a robotic “Viennese Waltz,” you name it.

Before dawn, we have to connect the lights to their wires, so they can raise themselves up to the ceiling, and we take our boring line-up position for the workday.

We live for after hours.

Copyright © 2025 John Arthur Robinson

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