IKEA

On Saturday my sister Krishelle asked me if I wanted to make a "quick trip" to IKEA with her. I agreed, and in so doing made the biggest mistake of my entire life. Besides last year when I ate some bad salmon at a restaurant in Palau where I knew everyone had the stomach flu. And besides some bright red socks I wore to work a few weeks ago when a colleague told me I looked like I was on a University of Phoenix commercial. And besides every time I went to scout camp as a teenager instead of intentionally breaking several bones to get out of it.

Ok. The IKEA thing actually takes a back seat to a lot of other really bad decisions on the list of my life's bad decisions. But on Saturday it felt like a top contender.

This is because on Saturdays the population of the entire world attempts to fit inside of all of the IKEA stores at once. And once you get inside you can't leave until you've walked the maze of mass-produced generic furniture covered in norovirus and throat chlamydia from all of the people who have rolled around on it since it was last sterilized.


Krishelle needed to buy a couch. She marched into the store, me trailing her helplessly, found the largest item the store sells, pointed at it, and said "this will be in my home by the end of the day!

TWO FREAKING HOURS LATER after accidentally waiting in the wrong line that wound around the store and having to get into a different long line that wound around the store, went outside, and looped the neighboring state penitentiary twice, we finally got to our final waiting point. This is where they bring out your purchased item in boxes on carts.

When they rolled out the THREE gigantic boxes, each equivalent to a medium-sized car, I looked at Krishelle and demanded, "WHY DO YOU HATE ME!?"

She gave turned to me with a look in her eyes that said, "no, child. You don't get to complain about this. I have helped you move four times a year, sometimes across the world, for the last decade. You can help me move a couch."

And her eyes were right. So I absorbed my anger and started wheeling the impossibly large boxes out to Cathie's car, which we had borrowed in hopes that it would be big enough to fit everything.

The only plausible explanation I can think of as to how we fit those boxes into her car is that Cathie's vehicle possesses Mary Poppins bag qualities.

Bob insisted on coming to Krishelle's place to help drag them up her stairs. We protested this because, while somehow inexplicably one of the strongest people who has ever lived, Bob's back can't handle the heavy labor.

Krishelle and I huffed and puffed to get one of the boxes up the stairs together, all while commanding Bob to not touch anything. The next thing we knew, he had taken the heaviest of the three boxes and hurled it into the open air, up the stairs, and to its final destination.

If that man isn't walking today, he has only himself to blame.

~It Just Gets Stranger