Dear IKEA in general:
You are awesome. Don’t believe those haters that say you are overwhelming and huge and located in office-park hell. Don’t listen to those detractors who say your employees are simultaneously astoundingly clueless and terrifyingly perky. All I care about, baby, is that in you, cheap(ish) furniture AND Swedish meatballs are combined in the one perfect destination. Also, Swedish fish. Also, little candles. Also, the weird bird-of-prey recording that plays in the huge parking garage make it seem like you’re going to the zoo, which you sort of are, considering all the screaming children flitting happily about, and I just appreciate the stab at authenticity you’ve made there.
IKEA, I sort of wrote a song about you once, except it’s not really a song, it’s just the “Maria” song from West Side Story with “IKEA” substituted for “Maria,” but I want you to know that sometimes, late at night, I think of you, and I whisper that song to myself, like, “I KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAA.” And while we’re on the subject, I have a friend who is getting her master’s in Swedish and she says it’s really pronounced “Eee-kay-ah” and she’s going to Scandinavia this summer and like I said she’s got one degree in Swedish and is getting another but everyone else pronounces it “Eye-KEE-ah” and that way it also rhymes with “Maria” and therefore goes in the song but I am worried now and I am hoping you, or someone, can clear this up for me.
Dear Pretty Drapey Mosquite-Netty Thing I Got To Hang Over My Bed:
You are very pretty. I have been thinking about purchasing you for quite a while now but I demurred because I thought maybe it would be a little too precious, like, ooh, look at me, I’m a pretty pretty princess with a canopy bed. But then I checked, and it turns out I am a pretty pretty princess and I’ve always wanted a canopy bed and so, thanks to you, Pretty Drapey Thing and the capitalist system, I am going to have one. I am looking forward to getting tangled up in you routinely as I roll out of bed and then potentially ripping you out of the yet-to-be-purchased ceiling hook by accident one day and maybe getting ceiling plaster all over everything and ruining the roof of the house and then totally not getting my outrageously huge security deposit back. Anyway, I am going to sew flowers on you and I’m sure you will be even prettier then.
Dear Very Nice Looking Young Man Who Helped Us Out In The Warehouse Section Of IKEA When We Couldn’t Physically Load The Bookshelves Onto Our Cart:
You know, usually I don’t go for the Abercrombie frat boy look, but you were so nice! I’m sorry we stood and goggled at you while you effortlessly hefted heavy boxes full of particleboard. I’m also sorry that when you first very nicely offered to help we were all “No, dude, we can do it! We’re fine! Heh! We got it! Uh, this is heavy. Uh, dude, could you help us out here?” instead of just graciously accepting your offer and wondering privately if you perhaps you had really nice abs underneath your polo shirt. You looked like the type that might. Anyway, you were the soul of courtesy and I think you should call me so that you can come with me to IKEA all the time. Probably I’m going to invest in a three-cornered shelf in a couple of weeks and probably that will be heavy and I can just see how you’d come in handy. But you’re going to have to confirm or deny my suspicions about your abs. I’m just saying.
Dear Sundry:
Girl, you are the best. You drove that BAMT like it was your job and I was so impressed. I was sort of dismayed by the rush of power I got just sitting in the passenger seat, high above the rest of the freeway fray. I found myself laughing at all the other little itsy bitsy cars and pondering what would happen if one of those itsy bitsy cars were to ram us or something. Nothing, that’s what? I may have even laughed a Mephistophelean laugh at some point, along the “Muah ha ha ha ha!” lines. Anyway, you are the ideal person with whom to go to IKEA because a) you are the best, as abovementioned, and b) because you talked me into getting the Pretty Drapey Thing and had the idea to put flowers on it and c) you totally figured out how to get all the boxes of particleboard into the BAMT. This was my favorite part:
Sundry: Okay! Okay! Leverage! Just push that thing there and then we’ve got it!
Chiara: Urk! Got it! Woo!
Sundry: Woo!
Chiara: B! A! M! T!
Sundry: B to the A to the motherfuckin’ T!
Chiara: [long, worshipful silence] Oh mah gah. That was so great. That was so great.
Sundry: Woo!
I’m sorry to report that I neglected to do pimp hands at this juncture. It would have, obviously, been the perfect application for pimp hands, I know. The burden of pimp hands is a heavy one and sometimes you just forget to do pimp hands in a situation that just begs for pimp hands. I won’t let it happen again.
Dear Chest Of Drawers I Spent Four Hours Assembling Last Night:
HA HA HA HA HA! Oh, you thought you could beat me, with your extraordinarily heavy component parts, you nigh-incomprehensible instructions and your thousands of little fiddly nails and screws and toggles and brads and pins? You thought that the first couple of times I banged my fingers with a hammer I would give up? You thought I’d just call it a day and go to bed on time instead of fixing you with a steely glare and brandishing my Philips’ head screwdriver at you? You thought I would subside into tears the first couple of times I couldn’t figure out which large piece of particleboard was supposed to fit into which other large piece of particleboard, or when I couldn’t make the drawers fit into their assigned drawer spaces, or when I accidentally dropped you, fully assembled, on my leg. You were so wrong. Because I totally WON because I totally have a place to PUT MY SOCKS NOW and even though I had to, um, modify one of the drawers in a manner that didn’t appear to be endorsed by the text-free instructions, I totally have a place to put my socks now! You thought I’d be using those Barbie-colored plastic things I stupidly bought at Target last week forever, didn’t you. How wrong you were, chest of drawers. I was not stymied even a little tiny bit when you pretended like you weren’t going to fit in the closet like I told you, even though I had specifically planned to put you in the closet the whole time! So I totally OWN YOU and I have MADE YOU MY BITCH and I can’t wait to get a real tool belt and wear it around the house every day JUST IN CASE YOU NEED MORE INTIMIDATING.
Dear Bookshelves:
You’re next. Don’t give me any trouble.