Sometimes things that seem like good ideas in the moment end in regret. Likes that tortilla press that you bought on Black Friday, laughed about on Saturday, and forgot about on Sunday. But just because they go forgotten doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

I was reminded of this when I came into school on Wednesday. I was greeted by a hostile landscape of upturned chairs and a clutter of boxes and plastic wrap. When I looked into the classrooms I didn’t see the desks I’ve grown accustomed to, but shiny, bright, new…triangles? Wait, that can’t be right. Who would make a tiny triangular table?

Now, it has been made painfully clear to me by the Greenhills 6th grader that lives in the same house as me that these new tables are very nice, that they don’t have gum and stickers and messages scratched into the top, that in fact these tables are nicer than sliced bread, okay, they are amazing! Say it! Amazing! And that they’re miles ahead of the stoic, time tested, and, above all else, old ones I am defending. To this I say, “Nuh uh!” 

I’m sure that the person that got these desks had good intentions, and we will eventually get used to them, but at least in the short term they have resulted in what I would call a state of DEFCON 1 level alarm. 

As a newly minted Curmudgeon I have to say that I too would be alarmed if I were taking a Calculus exam and my table was trying to run away from me. Not to mention that those tables have wheels and we, probably, don’t. I can see it now; speeding chairs and desks in the hands of middle schoolers form a roller derby style arena. 6th graders for whom these desks are at eye level are concussed as stronger highschoolers fight for a coveted space in the one place these desks cannot go, the bathroom. These apocalyptic visions may never come true, but I can still hope.

All jokes aside, I liked the old desks. They were familiar, good, and just dented enough that nobody would bat an eye if there was one more scratch on them. They’re a piece of Greenhills history, and though they must not have been here forever they are inseparable from the one I know. 

 They aren’t pretty or modern or new, but they get the job done. They’ve got a part for your butt and a part for your books and that’s all you really need. And as an expert in deskology I believe that I have the qualifications to say, “Kids, just say no to rolly desks”. 

And at great risk of killing a dead horse I say, “That’s what interior designers have been doing? Triangles?”