Here is a house with shutters. Shutters are those things you see beside the windows. They have hinges so that, when it seems desirable for whatever reason, they can be shut—that is, they can be moved into position to cover the glass of the window.

Now here is a house with mock shutters.

These are advertised as things that will “add sophistication to your home,” and for a long time Dr. Boli simply could not figure them out. It was not just that they were not functional; it was that he could not understand what the people who installed them thought they were.

If they were conceived of as illustrations of shutters, the way some people wear a shirt with a picture of a jacket and tie on it, that might make sense. You cannot afford the expense of hinges, but you want your neighbors to think that you have the kind of money it would take to put hinges on your shutters.

But obviously they are not conceived of that way. Take a look at the second picture again. Imagine the shutters shutting. Imagine how much of the windows on the first floor they would cover. When you have stopped laughing, try to explain what the people who installed them thought they were installing.

For decades this mystery has bothered Dr. Boli. What do these mock shutters represent? What idea are they meant to convey to us? What is the message of the plastic paste-on shutters?

But at last a reader and friend gave Dr. Boli the explanation he had been waiting for. Shutters, she said, are air quotes for windows. They tell us, the spectators, “This decorative glass-covered hole in the wall is a ‘window.’ In ancient times, before LED bulbs, ‘windows’ were used to admit ‘light’ into the house, and some of them could even be ‘opened’ to admit ‘fresh air,’ a substance on which our ancestors placed much value, though the reason for it has been lost in the ‘mists’ of ‘time.’ Today we honor the traditions of our ancestors by placing ‘windows’ in the walls of buildings of the higher class.”

This is the only satisfactory explanation for mock shutters that Dr. Boli has ever heard. But it does bring up another question: What is the overlap between people who put mock shutters on windows where they could not possibly shut and people who constantly use air quotes in conversation? Dr. Boli has begun to suspect that a Venn diagram of those two groups could be made with one circle.

Meanwhile, now that we have made some progress in the mystery of the mock shutters, perhaps another reader will be able to explain rear spoilers on front-wheel-drive cars.

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The photographs are generously provided by Father Pitt.