Since I’m taking a short break from the writing to help a friend move into his new house, I’ve decided to write something a little different. Here is how I see the process of building IKEA furniture:
Denial:
It begins when you see the furniture set up in the store. “It can’t be THAT hard to put together,” you say to yourself as you sit on the already constructed model in the dream-like show room. “What could possibly go wrong?” Even as you begin to unpack the many pieces and that familiar sense of foreboding bubbles to the surface, you push it back down. The cartoon directions are cute! The furniture has a funny name! It can’t be that bad…
Anger:
It’s been hours. Your living room now looks like a battleground riddled with the corpses of torn cardboard, oddly named screws and some directions that make no sense. A vague feeling of hatred for that little stick dude rises to the surface as you peer bemusedly at the directions one more time.
“Why don’t they make non- Allen key screws?!? What’s up with those directions?”
Welcome to anger-ville, population you.
Bargaining:
“Oh, —–.” and other variations. Insert any and all of your favorite expletives here, because in this phase they are plentiful. Usually occurring after you have built your furniture backwards, lost that all important screws and/or have fully assembled said furniture without a crucial piece, you beg the furniture to “just work dammit!”
Depression:
Dammit, it didn’t work. Maybe you insulted its mama one too many times, because now it looks like something made by Picasso’s brain-damaged brother.
“This is never going to look like furniture,” you moan, sinking to the floor. In the depths of furniture building depression, THE DREAM seems pretty far away.
Acceptance:
Congratulations! At some point, you have to pick yourself up off of the floor and do your best (or worst).
Your furniture may or may not look like what it did in the store, but you can sit on it/store your stuff in it and now it is time to accept the fact that it is what it is. Good job, friend, go and have a beer.
