Over many years of marriage, I have accumulated many blessings, the least of which are a dozen or so cheaply made Allen wrenches. I run across them at random times and in random places: junk drawers, knickknack boxes, and, occasionally, mingling with the “real” tools in the drawers of my toolbox.
The Allen wrenches are not good tools, but interlopers, cheap, Chinese-made tools made for one-time use to assemble the cheap, assemble-yourself IKEA or online-ordered furniture that my wife seems so very fond of. The Allen wrenches come with the furniture and are designed with the intended lifespan of one assembly plus six flights across the room, thrown during fits of anger and frustration. In my case, at the poorly translated instruction booklet, which I should probably try harder to understand by actually opening and reading it.
But reading instructions, obeying them, and taking the time to plan before doing go against my sense of Yankee ingenuity, part of which prevents me from throwing away the Allen wrenches when the project is completed, in the event I may need them again someday, or perhaps can sell them to a Connecticut tourist. This ingenuity may, in some cases, be referred to as insanity, the same insanity that sometimes wakes me up at night in a cold sweat, quite sure I hear the tiny laughter of Allen wrenches taunting me from their secret hideaways within my home.
When I was a younger, stronger man, I would complain bitterly when a box containing this cheap furniture would land on my porch, well knowing the frustration contained within. Occasionally, I would open the door for the UPS driver, who would always avoid direct eye contact and walk back to his truck smirking. Married man, probably, with his own collection of cheap Allen wrenches.
I hated assembling this furniture more than I hated almost anything. Even more so when we would move, which was quite often in our younger days. Due to the rickety construction and processed wood-like material used in its production, this furniture would crumple like a house of cards when moved even slightly, all to the distant laughter from various drawers throughout our house.
“Let’s buy REAL furniture!” I would roar as the furniture crumbled in my hands. “Oak! Walnut! Maple!” Angela would calmly console me and wisely wait a month or two before ordering its replacement … online.
It may have taken several decades for my words to actually be heard, but she seems to have listened. Our new place had no linen closet. Angela found a beauty on Marketplace, located a couple of hours away. Skillfully, she bargained with the seller for a month or more, down to an irresistible price. The look in her eyes was a familiar one: Her mind was made up, and arguments would be given no quarter. This was HER linen closet. I reached for the car keys.
Solid cedar and gorgeous, with the help of the man who sold it to us, we somehow managed to cram it into our SUV and drive it home, the tailgate unable to be closed, our dome lights on the whole way home. Oh, did I mention it weighed easily 200 pounds? Working together with a variety of dollies and wheeled devices, we were able to get it through the door of our house. Of course, it was going upstairs. Where else?
The next day, as she headed out the door to visit our daughter, she shouted, “Don’t try to move that yourself!” So, as soon as I couldn’t hear her car anymore, I decided I would surprise her with my thoughtfulness and dazzle her with my he-man strength by having it upstairs and linen-ready upon her return.
I gathered my wits and dollies, removed the solid cedar doors and shelves, and located my resolve and work gloves. I estimated its pared-down weight at 150 pounds. I’d moved heavier things, I reasoned. Sure, I was younger then, but guile can replace strength, I told myself. Mind over matter.
As I wrestled it into position at the foot of the stairs, I noticed how much heavier it seemed without Angela helping me. Maybe I needed some ice cream to build up my strength first, I thought. And perhaps a small power nap.
Thus bolstered by equal parts nappage and chocolatey goodness, I pulled on my trusty work gloves. Using every bit of my strength and wile, I was able to maneuver the cedar behemoth onto the stairs. And there it sat, blocking all but a few inches of the path upstairs. Every day for a week, I tried to move it, but the most I could manage was about four inches. I gave it everything I had, but I just was not strong enough.
This is a tough thing to come to grips with for a guy. I no longer could do something that I was positive I could have done in previous years. In my imagination, I could picture myself sliding the brute to almost the top of the stairs before my age, gravity, and the weight of the solid cedar combined to push me backward down the stairs to the chorus of the Allen wrenches’ laughing derision: “So, you wanted solid wooden furniture, eh, old man? IKEA not good enough for ya’? Careful what you wish for, Gramps. You might just GET it!”
Within my overactive imagination, I envisioned my crushed and lifeless body flipping through the air, finally falling into the killer linen closet, and the doors slamming closed, sealing me in a tomb at the foot of our stairs. Angela would find me thus interred upon her arrival home, dead as a doornail but remarkably fresh and bug-free due to the very nature of cedar’s inert qualities.
My daydream ended as many of mine do as I grow older: with the final words of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in the movie “Magnum Force” as he walks away from his corrupt boss’s exploded and burning car: “A man’s gotta know his limitations …”
By the way, I’m still alive, and Angela decided the linen closet would look better downstairs, near the laundry room. It looks GREAT there.
“If you become discouraged in the day of distress, your strength will be meager.” Proverbs 24:10
A native Vermonter, Paul Wein has finally made it back home to Grafton, Vermont, after 45 years in California, where he met his wife (and photographer) Angela. They have an adult daughter, Cassie, and two cats. He can be reached at pwein35@gmail.com.