Rhetoric

The Turn of the Screw

How putting one cabinet together tore me apart

Not long ago, I would have told you that I love assembling furniture. I’d have said I found it therapeutic to turn my brain off and turn a pile of parts into the picture on the front of the box.

But then I came face to face with the Real Living® Farmhouse TV Stand. And everything changed.

I offered to put one together for my dear mother, neither of us aware of what evil she’d wrought upon us. With a smile on my face and a podcast in my ear, I sliced the box open and got to unpacking, careful not to miss any white parts among the equally white styrofoam.

"Geez, I didn’t think this box could hold this much stuff," I thought in passing. I should have realized it then. But not until opening the manual to the first diagram did I discover what fresh hell had befallen me.

It might as well have been the schematics of the freakin’ Hadron Collider. Parts labeled A to ZZ (not a typo—it needed two alphabets), plus a hardware store’s worth of bolts, hinges, and other instruments of torment. As I sat on the floor, taking in the scene like a toddler who’d just shattered a vase, it occurred to me, a little too late: I didn’t have a drill.

"This isn’t so bad," I thought, courageous fool that I was. "At least it’s alphabetized." I lined all the letters up, nodding approvingly as I turned to Step 1. It began with Part O. "Oh."

It shouldn’t be legal to subject innocent people to such dense and chaotic instructions. Cam bolts, barrel nuts, wood screws, each demanding their own wrench (or pliers if they needed discipline). At one point, I was holding one section up with my feet while twisting nails into another, jabbing my screwdriver into pre-drilled holes that were too small for reasons known only to the monster who drilled them.

The worst part is, I let it get to me. I got sloppy— misplaced parts, miscounted holes, stepped on a bag of nails once or twice—which only compounded my frustration. I was spiraling. But I refused to let some stupid planks of stupid wood win this war of attrition.

As if calling my bluff, the manual presented Step 9. It needed four Part Hs. I had three. I started scouring my inventory for that short, cube-y piece that looked a bit … like styrofoam.

In that moment, my mind went blank. I watched my body fling the manual, lurch for the box, and rip it apart with my bare hands, rending cardboard and packing tape, grasping for Part H like it had killed my family.

I was beyond feeling. Beyond weakness. There was nothing left of me but vengeance. Even if it destroyed me, Real Living® would be Real Dying today.

Six hours. I wrestled for six hours with this wretched cabinet. I was glassy-eyed, drenched in sweat, my screwdriving arm in ruins— but victory was finally mine.

And for a brief moment, it was so beautiful; I wondered if this was how new mothers felt after giving birth. “This one looks great,” mom says. My eyes widen in horror as she pats my shoulder. “We’ll do the other next week!”

She bought two.