How To Assemble a Barstool

I never said I was a mechanical engineer

Missive from hell

When assembly if the stretcher have remark an marking hole then should put at front stand.

Before I explain the previous sentence. . .

We all have our own talents, yeah? The world would be pretty dull if everyone were good at everything. My contribution to an exciting world is this:

I was 25 before I knew which was the business end of a screwdriver. My wife showed me.

If I hammered a nail without bending it, it was an accident. My father-in-law built his house. The whole damned thing. I couldn’t build a Lincoln Logs* cabin until I was 45. Five-year-olds in the neighborhood come by and ask me, “How come you’re changing that tire with a monkey wrench?’’

Tool boxes see me as comedy. IKEA is not my friend. How do you put together a dresser by looking at pictures?

I have one skill. At least, people who paid me over the years decided I had one skill. You’re looking at it. Nobody ever bought me a socket set for Christmas.

One problem was, I lived in apartments ‘til I was 12. We never had to fix anything. We called the hairy guy in the sleeveless T-shirt. Another problem was, none of my ancestors knew how to do anything, either. My maternal grandfather claimed he was directly descended from John Smith (the 1st-generation colonist dude) and talked to God personally.

Never fixed a toilet

Do you really think a man who hangs with God is gonna know how to fix a toilet?

My dad’s dad was a university professor and an acclaimed arbiter. Whom might you know in academe ever built a deck?

The result of these unfortunate genetics is me. If you need adjectives, I’m your guy. Just don’t ask me to hang wallpaper.

So imagine my paralysis when over the weekend, I was given one job: Put together two bar stools.

Jillian The Magnificent and her husband, The Estimable Ryan Mavriplis, were moving from Blue Ash back to Montgomery, to an apartment complex they’d lived in for several years. We parents were doing the heavy lifting until Moving Day, when our 60-something backs said, “we are no longer lifting couches up flights of stairs.’’

For some reason, I’d managed to avoid all the pre-move drudgery. No packing up dishes for this boy. No hooking up cable or spackling walls. No, all I had to do was assemble two bar stools.

Ha.

Ha.

They’d arrived in a long, slender box. Back legs, front legs, seat, support pieces. A bag of screws and washers. An Allen wrench. My father-in-law could build these babies today, just by looking at them, and he’s nearly 97.

My terror mounted as I unpacked the box. Everything was there, including one page of “instructions.’’

MODEL: BC830 BAR CHAIR. “Pace all wooden prevent from being scratched.’’

Yes, of course.

There was a diagram, naturally, but it wasn’t quite representative of the DaVinci School of Architectural Design. Just four sketches of various stool pieces and a suggestion of how they might fit together.

And this. This one instruction:

When assembly if the stretcher have remark an marking hole then should put at front stand.

How to build a stool

Perhaps somewhere in this world there is a man reading these instructions and nodding at their obvious simplicity. Guy grabs the front, back and legs, screws some screws, slams on the seat and — have remark an marking hole — a stool appears. Not me. I’m wondering why someone in Malaysia, to whom English is a 12th language behind Urdu, Tamil, Javanese, Sanskrit, Mandarin Chinese, graffiti on men’s room walls in Bratislava and cave-wall wisdom on Borneo, is telling me how to put together a piece of furniture.

(I especially liked the drawing labeled FULLY SET-UP (CHAIR). As if to underscore we wouldn’t actually be making a FULLY SET UP (NUCLEAR WARHEAD)

I could hear my wife and Jillian’s in-laws when I showed up at the new apartment with the box of pieces and the hammer. “You had one job. And by the way, you don’t need a hammer to assemble a stool.’’

So here’s what I did:

1. Took all the pieces from the box

2. Re-read the instructions, to make sure I wasn’t, you know, missing something.

3. Quit trying to assemble the stool. When assembly if stretcher have. . .

4. Closed all the windows in the house. Retreated to the closet in the basement.

5. Yelled obscenities at the top of my voice. Some began with Mother. Others with God. Then should put at front stand.

That was satisfying.

I packed up the box in shame, drove to J and R’s place, then it occurred to me: They had a couple identical stools already assembled. I spread the pieces out on the floor of their new place and put the stools together by eye-balling one that was already built.

When I was done, I held a finished stool above my head and did a manly damned chair dance.

*Lincoln Logs. An American children's construction toy consisting of square-notched miniature lightweight logs used to build small forts and buildings. (Wikipedia)

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . I was gonna make it If I Had A Hammer, but I don’t especially like that tune. Bruce Springsteen was on CBS Sunday Morning last week, and talked about making the album Nebraska, a bare-bones Guthrie-esque set that I’m thinking most causal fans didn’t find especially compelling. Johnny Tool Man here included.

My Brooooce set is Tunnel of Love, from which this tune is taken.