Assembly Required

In my next incarnation, if I don’t return as a cricket or a gopher, I will be a carpenter or mechanical engineer, the kind of guy who can build a fence on a Saturday afternoon or dismantle an engine and put it back together. Hand and power tools will consider me a kindred soul rather than a dangerous imposter.

The other day we bought a new desk chair from World Market. It’s called a “Konrad” chair, made in Thailand from teak wood. Assembly required, of course. As I unpack the carton on the living room rug, I consider the long journey this chair has made from where it was produced to where it will be used. Trucked from a factory somewhere in Thailand, (what kind of factory, what kind of working conditions and wages?) packed into a sea container and loaded on a ship for the voyage across the ocean, perhaps stopping in other ports along the way to collect more cargo. World trade is a web of faceless factory workers, middlemen, transportation conglomerates, freight brokers and wholesalers, and a product moves through many hands before it lands on the floor of a store like World Market.

When I embark on a home improvement project anything can happen, and when all is said and done it’s more likely than not that there will be parts leftover. It’s also certain that at some point I will unleash a torrent of curse words and become cross with my wife and kids. (They have learned to give me plenty of space). The written directions and assembly diagrams for the Konrad chair make my head swim. Nuts and bolts, washers and screws; attach part A to B and B to C, tighten with Allen wrench. Sounds simple enough, in theory, but I am mechanically challenged and the damn Allen wrench keeps slipping from my fingers.

I’ve long thought that two people who are considering marriage should first attempt to build a piece of furniture that contains many pieces and parts. How they go about it is sure to be revelatory. Many years ago, my wife and I assembled a large computer hutch, and by the time we finished we despised one another. Every negative aspect in our respective personalities was on display that day.

Thankfully, I succeeded in assembling the Konrad chair without my usual histrionics, and when I sat on it for the first time it didn’t collapse beneath me. The pride I felt was disproportionate to the difficulty of the task, but given my mechanical incompetence, I still felt a sense of accomplishment.