Building something

There are fewer times that a man feels more useful than when he is building something.

Nature has a way of compensating for this because place a man in a labour ward of a maternity hospital, and he is rendered useless. Ask a man his opinion on the colour and fabric of new curtains. Useless. But put something in front of him and ask him to build it, and he feels useful. In fact, one might say you’ve just made him king of the world. This is how I felt last night. I arrived home to find 7000 boxes lying out on my balcony. Ah, my bed had arrived. Along with 12 stapled pages of instructions. Pffff, who needs instructions? They are about as useless as directions. So I set about constructing my bed.

Place part A alongside part B and use the Allen key to screw in part C to part D. Then flip part B over and attach part Z to part T via part D. Not too hard now otherwise...oops. Oh well, useless chip of wood that anyway.

But I always find it fascinating that at the end of the building “king-of-the-world euphoria” process, one stands with one’s chest puffed out, admiring one’s handicraft with immense pride. And then that pride balloon is popped when one looks to the ground next to this masterfully-built thing and sees what I saw in the attached pic.

Yup, leftovers. A few part Fs just lying around. “Where’d those come from?” one asks. Maybe they were extras, you know, just in case you lost one or something. And that chip of wood that broke off? Not my fault, the wood is obviously inferior. I must contact the company and tell them that for $300 I expect better quality. Even if my newly-constructed bed only stands 10 inches off the ground.