I am in big trouble. That heat wave we suffered was all my fault. I’d grown complacent about the cooler summer we enjoyed this year, and prickles of skepticism nudged at my mind. “What global warming?” I asked recklessly. “Hahaha!!! What a bunch of hooey!” This blasphemy deeply offended the Supreme Universe Weather Gods because suddenly I was reminded of (a) how oppressively hot it can get in these parts and (b) how unbearably cranky I become when it does.
Granted this heat was nothing like the 114-degree record temps we experienced last year, but that was precious little comfort at the time. And as sometimes happens in the midst of a heat wave, after several days of walking around on big, old clown feet swollen from too many days of high temperatures, I took leave of my senses and made a rash decision. Specifically, I concluded I should buy a new fan.
Now this decision probably doesn’t seem overly outlandish on the surface. Except this is late summer and merchants are, after all, busy putting up Christmas lights. But I located a small variety of fans that had languished on a shelf during the cooler summer months and were now being snatched up like free lattes at Starbucks. I astutely chose a model that showed good air stream capability, or in layman’s terms, there was a picture of a fan on the box.
Making a huge leap in logic, I assumed purchasing a fan meant I could plug the thing in and enjoy cool breezes immediately. However, when I tried to open the box, I made the unfortunately discovery that it had been assembled by Packaging Nazis bent on assuring that nobody, short of a 27-year old muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger, could pry the dang thing open.
Letting nothing come between cool air and me, I attacked the carton with scissors and when those didn’t work, I used my big, scary kitchen knife. Ripping into the box with a vengeance, I virtually shredded the darned thing. Now this was a problem. My husband, for reasons known only to him, has saved every box that’s ever crossed his path, all of them in pristine condition and neatly stacked in the basement. I know better than to mess with his box collection. With this box resembling the mauling victim in an attack by male African lions, I faced a wrenching dilemma. Do I hand over the box and face my spouse’s look of disdain at my box-entering ineptitude or squish up what’s left of the blasted thing and hide it under the bed?
But, fiddledeedee, I’d worry about the stupid box later. Meanwhile, I was ready to enjoy some delicious cool air. Except – Yikes! I’d missed the small print, which contained three of the most dreaded words in the English language: Some Assembly Required.
Now I know what some of you are thinking. Why didn’t you just have your husband open the box and put the fan together? And you have every right to wonder seeing how I am the quintessential poster girl for mechanically challenged individuals. “Pleeeeeeeze put this together for me,” I beg my spouse when confronted with anything containing more than one part. Tragically, I’m one of those women that gives other, more dexterous women a bad name. Even those so-called “bank boxes” make me crazy. By the time I arrive at Flap C, I’ve lost track of where Flaps A and B are supposed to go. I’d like to recommend to big office supply stores that they hire permanent, full-time help to assemble those boxes right there on the spot so people like me can just take them home and fill them with whatever we buy them for in the first place.
Unfortunately my husband wasn’t present to put my fan together, so I was left to flounder with a pile of approximately 840 parts and a couple of screws. But first I had to scratch and claw at the industrial-strength Styrofoam forms that were keeping my fan parts entrapped. Whenever I come across packaging Styrofoam, I find I’ve been dealt some mutant form of it that has hardened into the consistency of concrete, whereupon I’m forced to alarmingly jab sharp objects into it again and again a la Norman Bates in “Psycho” until it crumbles into powder, creating a Styrofoam blizzard in the living room.
Styrofoam was child’s play, however, compared to the “Assembly Instructions.” Here was a diagram of the fan’s numerous components, which – I swear – resembled an unassembled space shuttle. The teeny-tiny print was legible only with the aid of a super-powerful magnifying glass, but in that heat I’d have probably set the house on fire. So with my pathetically inadequate reading glasses slipping down my nose, I slowly put the fan together. Sort of. I mean I certainly wasn’t going to go rummaging through the house for a Phillips screwdriver in all that heat for heaven’s sake so I made do with the tips of my scissors. Plus I ended with one left over mystery screw that I couldn’t locate on the diagram, undoubtedly thrown into the box as a hilarious joke by the Packaging Nazis.
So I found an available outlet, crossed my fingers and plugged in the fan, hoping the thing wouldn’t take off and fly around the room backwards in a reverse-thrust inverted helicopter-type fashion. Because I’m afraid it did sound a
little funny – like “thunk-thunk-whirrrrrrrr; thunk-thunk-whirrrrrrrr.” But the fan blades were revolving and so far I haven’t lost any major body parts due to my assembly job causing a gasket to blow or something.
Happily this fan-assembly incident had a positive outcome; it made me realize it was time to just accept that I am no mechanical genius. I learned it’s OK to not be proficient at some things and it’s OK to ask for help. I know these things now. And another thing I know for sure: I still haven’t a clue what I’m going to do about that dad-gummed box.Â
Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill 24 years. Reach her at Ga*********@*ol.com.
