James's Beard

A place for me to write.

Name:
Location: Cleveland, Ohio, United States

Just a young man trying to make it on sheer wit, guile, and dumb luck.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

I came. I saw. Ikea.

I am now, along with my lovely fiancée, Marissa, the proud owner of a beautiful house in the Ohio City section of Cleveland. Owning a house is, in one word, awesome. It is an overwhelming feeling walking into a house for the first time and knowing that it is yours. That it is not simply some house on the corner, but your home. Yours and yours alone. Marissa and I could have spent days just wandering through empty rooms, staring moonily at each other the way young lovers are want to do. Of course, that would not be much use to us, since we have a whole empty house, and we have to fill that sucker up.

This is where Ikea comes in. Ikea, for those of you not hip to the Swedish, is a store specializing in affordable stylish furniture, which Marissa absolutely loves. The only drawback to Ikea is that all the furniture comes in little boxes disassembled into roughly one million tiny pieces. The customer is then left with the herculean task of putting all of those pieces back together into a piece of furniture roughly approximating, say, a bookshelf. To aid the customer, Ikea only provides a manual made up of only pictures. There are no words in an Ikea furniture assembly manual. Apparently words don’t fit into the ultra-streamlined ethos of Swedish ingenuity.

Now, where most people may blanch at the task of piecing furniture one screw at a time, I rise to the challenge. I don’t want to toot my own horn or anything, but I am basically the king of putting together Ikea furniture. It’s not so much a skill as a gift. One can’t learn to be the king. One can only be born the king. And, buddy, I was born into that royal family. Just give me the tools – most of them are provided in the box – and some time and watch as a beautiful television stand slowly materializes. Truly creating Ikea furniture, as opposed to building it, is an art not a science. I am the maestro of this art. The picture filled manual is my sheet music. The guest to my home is my audience. Please, come in. Sit down on the couch. I assembled it. Oh, you like my television stand. But a flick of my wrist (and screw driver and allen wrench). If you sneak into my bedroom – strictly off limits to visitors – and want to lie upon my bed, rest assured you are in good hands. My hands. The bed is the fruit of my very own labor.

Unfortunately my gift for furniture assembly is an underused attribute. I do not buy furniture that often. I have little opportunity to assemble chests of drawers. Perhaps once every few years I can flex my Ikea muscle. Sure, I’ve considered sharing my gifts with the world. I’ve considered advertising my service. What? You don’t want to put together your expertly engineered European wardrobe? You wish there was some expert on the subject to swoop in and save the day? Why I could be that hero, for a small charge. I could put an ad in the paper or on craigslist. Set up shop. Go into business on my own. I could be James the Ikea King for a living. Travelling from home to home leaving ultra-stylish bookcases, headboards, and sofas in my wake. I have the skills. I’m just not sure if the world is ready for this business model. At the time, the idea of an Ikea Furniture Assembly Expert (IFAX) seems more like a vocation imagined by some hack screenwriter for the next overly quirky indie comedy. For all my dreams of Ikea fueled greatness are merely that dreams.

So, I lay back and observe the world going past me knowing I have a great gift living in my soul going largely untapped. It may kill me when I see a bookshelf leaning due to substandard construction, but I will have to bite my tongue. The world is not ready for a man of my talents. The age of the IFAX is yet to dawn. I will be content knowing my gift and utilizing it only on rare occasions. I know my day may be coming. Just not yet. Unless you have an end table still unassembled and wish for it to be assembled the right way. You can give me a call. My rates or reasonable.

Shalom