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It’s been so long since Adam White’s Column was last updated that it seems necessary to catch up on what’s passed, what city I’m in, and what kind of desk chair I’m sitting on. So, in short: not much, Boston, and a pine swivel thing from IKEA.
I moved into my new South Boston apartment a week ago Monday, which was President’s day. My mom drove down from Maine with me, and we took the obligatory trip to Stoughton, Massachusetts, home of Jordan’s Furniture, Bernie & Phyl’s, IKEA, and about three million other home furnishing retailers with names that consist of some combination of the words, “mattress,” “discount,” and “king.”
As it turns out, my mom and I are idiots. We forgot that George Washington, on his deathbed, for some unknown reason, said, “You know what? After I die, I’d really like to be remembered one day a year by having every furniture store in the country knock a hundred bucks off the price of an off-white sleeper sofa.”
Then his chief of staff, who was at his bedside, said, “But, Sir, don’t you realize that if all the furniture stores have a sale at the same time, there’ll be a huge clusterfuck getting off the highway and it will take, like, a half hour to get from Route 24 to IKEA?”
But the President didn’t respond because he was already dead.
So it was a really, really bad idea to go to Stoughton on President’s Day. We sat in traffic, which caused our borrowed van (that smelled like goats because it belongs to farmers) to overheat even though it was twenty degrees outside. By the time we finally got to the IKEA, I was practically starving and I just HAD to eat some balls. Meatballs. Swedish meatballs.
IKEA fast fact: All IKEAs are huge. If they weren’t huge, why would they write their name in CAPSLOCK????!!!!
You could fit 747 Boeing 747s on either floor of the Stoughton IKEA, and the whole place smells like a combination of balls and buns. Swedish meatballs and cinnamon buns. It smells like balls and buns because they have a cafeteria on the second floor and a bakery on the first floor, so the odor from the balls slaps against the buns and makes you groan with pleasure no matter what you’re in the mood for.
IKEA has thoughtfully stenciled large yellow arrows on the floor to dictate traffic flow through the enormous store. My mom and I followed the arrows to the second floor cafeteria, but I kept looking over my shoulder to see if the arrows ever rearranged themselves. You have to be careful of these things. Arrows can be very manipulative and it would be exceedingly easy for IKEA to lure small children into a back room where they would be fed candy, shown Disney movies, and later turned into frozen family-sized meatball dinners.
My mom and I were both in the mood for balls (but not little kid balls), so we followed the arrows into the food line, ordered medium-sized dishes with fries, and sat down at one of the tables. I said, “I like these chairs. I wonder where they got them,” which I thought was a pretty funny thing to say because we were eating in an IKEA, so it should be pretty obvious where the chairs came from. My mom laughed. 80% of the time she thinks my jokes are 100% funny, which is a much higher ratio than I get from any other human being.
After lunch it was time to find me a bed. My mom had volunteered to pay for several housewarming gifts as a belated birthday present. My birthday’s in August. But it’s not her fault. I was supposed to buy myself a computer and then she was going to pay for part of it, but I never bought a computer because A) I don’t have any money, and B) I want to be the first ever PC-owner to throw an Aluminum Anniversary party for his laptop.
I picked out the cheapest bed frame IKEA has because I’m the cheapest customer they have. I was going to employ the same strategy in the mattress department but my mom made me get a nicer model, with springs and “memory foam.” I’m not sure what, exactly, memory foam is, but I think it’s supposed to remember everything you’ve ever done on it for the rest of its life. Which is a little freaky because it’s just a mattress, not a robot or an elephant.
We then followed the arrows to the LIVING and OFFICE sections and I bought a couple of low-profile easy chairs and the pine swivel desk chair. We were flying along. I bought a pillow, a strainer, a knife set, “bonus” silverware, steak knives, potholders, and dishtowels – all for an average of like 79 cents.
IKEA is so cheap because everything is made by the same Scandinavian elf-slaves that danced in the opening ceremonies of the ’94 Lillehammer Olympics. If you feel bad about supporting slave labor, you probably shouldn’t shop at IKEA. Then again, you probably shouldn’t shop anywhere else either. You should just milk organic cows on your farm in Vermont and cry about it.
By the time my mom had picked out towels and two floor lamps for her house, we were both exhausted and felt we deserved some of those cinnamon buns that had been tempting us throughout our journey through IKEA. We loaded up the van, which still smelled like goats but hadn’t (thank God) overheated while waiting for us in the parking lot. I stayed by the car as my mom went to find cinnamon buns. Two young women were loading large boxes into the back of their Subaru, and I offered to help, but they said they had everything under control. Then a couple minutes later, I looked over and a middle-aged bald gentleman was helping them, and I got kind of pissed off because if they actually thought he was stronger than me, that’s bullshit.
Back in the apartment I found out that the Scandinavian elf-slaves aren’t the only reason that IKEA’s prices are so low. You see, at night, all IKEA shoppers turn into Scandinavian elf-slaves. It took me five hours to assemble my bed frame, and I had to use every type of screw that’s ever been invented. To sink screws and nails, I had to use Phillips head screwdrivers, flat head screwdrivers, hex wrenches, and a few times, just for the hell of it, my forehead. By the end of the ordeal, my knuckles were bloody, and I smelled like a combination of B.O., buns, and balls.
But you know what? I earned a great night’s sleep.
Ask my mattress. It remembers.
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adam@theadamwhite.com |
