Odd Graffiti

Last night we took a trip to Ikea. It was to pick up some stuff for work, but since I’ll take any excuse I can get to feed my totally unnatural love of everything Ikea, I forced KJ to take me along, and once there, to look at every kitchen and every workspace in the place. I think he became frustrated by my need to open every single cupboard in every kitchen, but what can I say? I love it! I think it’s partly because I dream of having modern furniture and fittings in our house rather than brown shag carpet and brown painted woodwork; and maybe partly because it’s fun to look through cupboards and drawers that aren’t mine. I guess I’m nosey like that.

After a very average, but very cheap meal on our way past the Ikea cafeteria (how can you say no to $4.00 schnitzel and chips and $1 hot dogs?) I stopped into the bathrooms. It was there that I found the oddest bit of graffiti that I’ve ever come across.

It wasn’t clever at all, or even particularly noticeable as far as graffiti goes, but there, scrawled on the wall of the toilet in that childish sort of handwriting that only graffiti scribblers have, was:

“Bushfires 2009 – thanks to all the CFA, Police and Ambos”

What the?! When did graffiti become a means of communicating well wishes to police and other public servicemen & women!? I was always of the opinion that graffiti was either crass jokes, rude comments (often with accompanying phone number) or demands on various political forces to free whatever the graffiti-er thought needed freeing at the time. I had no idea that it was a way to thank the CFA, police and Ambos for all the work they did on Black Saturday. I guess I just assumed that there were slightly more appropriate (and legal) ways to do that.

I guess at least you could guarantee that a toilet cubicle in Ikea would probably have a reasonably high turnover of people, and possibly a lot of them would be people who were in need of furniture after the fires, and who felt the same way. So maybe it’s not as silly an idea as it first seemed. Still, not exactly the sort of thing I was expecting to come across on my regular trip to Ikea.