With a wicked flick, my finger crashes against the green wood fence. Paint splinters at the thud and curls off the wood like a pole-vaulter in a cartoon. In my heart I know what this means, but I don’t want to believe it. I grab the string of peeling paint and I pull it slowly outwards like a dying fingernail. The strip slides lengthwise from the top to the bottom of the fence. I try to let out my frustration with a single exasperated grunt but this neither helps nor hinders my disposition.
I lived in apartments for more than half my life, and now that I live in a house, I’m only beginning to realize that, for someone who has worked 60 hours a week for most of his life, I’m much lazier than I ever expected to be. I convinced my partner that the long line of dandelions is part of a larger evolutionary ecosystem; thus, it should never be tampered with. Laundry has always looked best in the basket it’s carried in; spider webs are nature’s best interpretation of an artistic representation of my nightmares; the smell of freshly vacuumed carpets is unnatural; and most of all, peeling paint is part of the entropy that supersedes humanities interference. Even now I realize I’m probably more than a little difficult to get along with–I can’t even imagine trying to live with me. I’m sure my partner probably realized this somewhere between the 35th time I played “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”… in a row.
None of this changes the fact that the fence won’t paint itself, and as I’ve been decried as the gatekeeper of the green wooden fence, thus it is on me to care for it. Laziness is not my only brobdingnagian barrier. One Google search alone produces dozens of shades, and not a single one looks anything like the colour of the healthy planks. The search is like looking at mug shots of your friends they’re familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time. Hell, I’m not even sure paint is all one needs. I remember a relative referencing painting a house with lacquer first… or was it liquor–knowing him it was probably both.
I step outside for inspiration. On the left is a tree with a dilapidated swing, to the right of that there is a small playground hanging askew—much like the one from my youth–and the grass underneath both would hide even the largest of baseballs. I could fix that swing. I could probably even straighten that playground, and I bet one coat of paint and it’d be good as new. Now that I think about it, it wouldn’t take much to make this backyard–a little time and a coat of paint.
