A good friend of mine rang me the other day….
“I split from L. (his girlfriend) last week and now I’ve been offered a new apartment. I can move in on Saturday! Will you help me move? I should just have left her cheating ass weeks ago! I just need to get away!”
Why the heck he asked me to help him move I still don’t know … It seemed kinda pointless to ask me for moving help. I’m 5.2 tall and Im pretty sure that muscles is an ancient myth. So I couldn’t exactly help out with the heavy lifting…
Maybe he needed a bit of a decorating help…but I don’t really get the whole ”Man deco” theme. So not much help there either….
Furthermore, was he insane? He knew me better than that to allow me anywhere near tools. Its like a ticking time bomb to put a hammer in my hand! Also, The combination of cardboard and styrofoam I can cause a heck of a lot of damage with … which usually involves a lot of profanities, yelling and bawling my eyes out.
But nevertheless, I like to consider myself a good friend, so I faithfully showed up in overalls, sneakers and an old T-shirt saturday morning and asked my friend who else were helping him move….
Well….with such short notice nobody but me apparently had free time on their hands to help him out….so basically it would just be me and him.
I pointed out the dangerous hazard situations I tend to create whenever Im around tools…
He laughed at me and calmly stated that it couldn’t possibly be that bad….
Boy, was he wrong …
Luckily, he only had to move 800 Meters and his friend had lent him a car. My friend quickly realized that I had been completely serious about what a hazard I can be around tools as well having admitted that I didn’t own any muscle power in my body… Luckily for him, he didn’t make fun of my claim about the lack of muscles (after I lost a heavy moving box four seconds after he had put it in my hands) …He quickly realized I wasn’t going to be that helpful when moving the furniture…so he knocked on his future neighbor’s door, and asked he could borrow some muscle power from him. Thankfully (and luckily for me!) he could.
Feeling significantly helpless, I tried to direct them the best I could, but soon got orders to shut up and instead carry some of the light boxes up the six flight of stairs to the apartment ….
Great! That I could do! After the light boxes were transported up to six floor (I was very proud! I didn’t fall at all on the damn stairs!) and the heavy furniture was now put into the apartment. My friend loudly declared that now it was time to go to the local Ikea and abuse his credit card in the such a way it would make a shopoholic blush….
See generally statements like that would usually feel almost orgasmic for me … but when it is not things that I buy for myself, abusing a credit cards looses its charm … but sure thing, lets take a field trip to Ikea …!
My friend manage to spend a few months wages of an amount … The little car was filled to the breaking point with various cardboard Ikea furniture, and we drove back to the apartment.
I had actually imagined that I would only be asked to unpack moving boxes and maybe organize his kitchen or something like that … Basically something simple ….. but oh no ….
I was asked to ….Well…I say asked….ordered might be a better word… to assemble a bookcase … a bookcase that was considerably larger than me ….
….
….
Me + tools+ ikea instruction manuals? …… I turned around to look at the bastard, and asked him seriously if he was suffering a brain hemorrhage or something like that since he’d suddenly thought I actually had any technical skills….
Who the Heck demands me to assemble a bookcase three times my own size and seriously does not expect me to break the furniture, myself and the room in the process ….?!
Seriously!
No, no, I could do it….for Christ sake, Im a Master graduate, all woman and a relatively intelligent human being … This was just an Ikea Bookcase … it was easily assembled, my friend pointed out. Then he would begin to collect some of the other furniture and begin putting things in place ….
Well …. never one two steps away from a challenge ….and high on his praise of me, I threw myself head first into the challenge. I took a hobby knife as there were no scissors unpacked yet …. and opened cardboard boxes ….
‘How hard can it be’ I remember thinking just before I began cutting the tape.
In fact, I had just scratched the tape and somehow managed to cut three fingers ….
WELL! What a great start! It looked promising! * Insert sarcasm here *
I made a band aid (the home version had to do as the bandaids weren’t unpacked yet either…: moist paper on the fingers and tape) and so she tried again …
After 20 minutes, finally succeeded …. opening the box ….
Oy Ve ….
it promised to be a long day … and night ….
I found the instruction manual and then checked to see if everything was there.
That was it. Luck was on my side at last!
Okay, according to the drawings, all I had to do was just …. just …. what the devil was that? What was that suppose to imagine ….?
Eventually I had to surrender and yelled after my friend ….. he did react …. I went and searched the apartment ….
She then found a post-it on the front door
‘You looked so concentrated in that I didn’t have the heart to disturb you. slipped out to find something for us to eat and then do some shopping … keep it up! Am sure you’ll get the case assembled in no time! ‘
Grrrr …. Dumbass!
I checked the time. Wow! I’d sat with the instruction manual for over an hour!
It really shouldn’t be this difficult! With an aggressiveness I’ve rarely felt before for material things, I threw myself into the project again.
Things were screwed, tightened, joined, screwed up again because of incorrect screws and bolts used, screwed, tightened again, put more together, screwed again ….
Finally there was something that could resemble a bookcase on the floor in front of me …. I managed to lift it up with difficulty, so it came up and stood on its own …. damn, it looked great! ….. and very much crooked and uneven!
How the devil had THAT happened?! How can a bookshelf from Ikea be crooked and skewed?! It was not because I had gone out in the forrest, chopped down a tree and made the bookcase from that!
No it wasn’t working….!
I got it down to ground again and began to take the whole thing apart and start over again ….
I became increasingly more and more impatient …. but stubbornness in me was stronger!
I would bloody well prevail!
How bloody difficult could it be to follow a simple manual?
Things were once again was screwed, tightened, kicked at, put together, turned, yelled loudly at when a shelf fell down and manage to hit my foot, assembled, screwed, turned, screwed, bolted, screwed and assembled and THEN! Up with it again ….
I waited for the satisfaction of a job well done to flow through my body …. instead…. annoyance and irritation came roaring back into me ….
The damn thing was still crooked!
….and it threatened to fall down on me!
A door slammed in. … my friend had returned! He entered the living room with take-out food in his arms.
“Whoa, this looks nice …..overall! But what do you say we take it down and assemble it together just for the heck of it?”
We my ass ….
It was obviously some sort of code for ‘me Tarzan therefore I am über macho with tools’ … My friend took over the project entirely! But! He did allow me to put the small white gadgets that hides the screws on the end …. and now of course the bookcase didn’t look crooked anymore.
It was a very strange moment for me…. I felt both pride and hurt at the same time … “I think I’m going home now.”
My friend sensed that the I was fast approaching my ‘extremely insulted and chick pissed’ stage and simply said … “yeah, okay, I’ll drive you home.”
When I came home to my own apartment, I looked at all the furniture I had assembled myself during the years …
….
….
….
They were all crooked …!
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