She Does it Herself

I once owned a desk the size of a small battleship. It was a v-shaped, pressboard model with a computer tray and excessive shelving. My parents bought it as a 20th birthday gift and my college boyfriend helped me put it together. He was an engineering major, so I guess that explains why he didn’t mind (and was even somewhat tantalized by) the 73 pages of instructions and eight hours of grueling assembly time.

During my college years I never acknowledged the sheer enormity of the desk because it was the only piece of furniture I owned. Plus, it was more than functional. This desk held all of my school papers, tax files, meat grinder, spare tires, and most of my winter coats.

The desk stayed with me through three apartments, despite the hernias and broken hips suffered by many dear friends on moving days. Though I donated it to a shipyard long ago, it still serves as an icon for one of the most confusing yet awe-inspiring aspects of my personality.

After graduating college and spending my first year in my own apartment, I decided it was finally time to get a big girl bed. Unfortunately, a queen size bed and The Desk of Unusual Size could not co-exist in the same room. It had to move.

I tried scooting it a bit just to see what I was dealing with. It would not budge. Not only did it weigh a metric ton, but it had somehow anchored itself to the steel piping beneath my floor. After repeatedly running and throwing my body against the seven-foot-tall side beam, I finally swallowed my pride and asked a male friend to help me.

“Sure,” he said, “But I won’t be available until 7:00 so you will have to wait until then.”

I could do that. It was only 6:00. Help was a mere hour away.

6:01 . . . 6:02 . . . 6:03 . . .

“You know,” I explained to myself, “That desk would probably be easy to move if you just split it into two sections.” This had been a necessary step when transporting the desk to different apartments, so I knew the separation could easily be achieved with the simple twist of an Allen wrench.

But where could I find an Allen wrench on such short notice? I knew I owned one. I thought I had put it in my “Do It Herself” toolkit, but it was no where to be found. Where could an Allen wrench hide in a small, 500-square-foot apartment? Was it in the back of my closet somewhere laughing and mocking me? Why was the stealth Allen wrench snorting and pointing, insisting that I could NEVER move that desk by myself?

I never found it, but during the archeological dig through my closet I did come across a hand saw.

“Look who’s laughing now, Allen wrench,” I scoffed.

I pulled the saw out of its sheath. With the strength of a lumberjack and the precision of a blind underwater dart champion, I bounded into the bedroom and sawed apart the brace that held my desk it its impenetrable “v” shape. The keyboard tray smashed against my right foot. With a painful crackling the upper bookshelf fell to the ground, gouging the desktop and smearing the wall with black furniture guts.

In order to separate the two halves, I had to lie in a birthing position underneath the desk and lift it with my legs. Then, since pushing was out of the question, I began to drag the first half behind me. Inch by inch, grunting with each step, I began the long, painstaking trek toward the living room. The desk moved about three centimeters every five minutes. Even the Israelite slaves, hauling bricks the size of elephants up towards the mighty pyramids, had never experienced such hardship.

When I finally got the desk together and settled in the dining area, I exhausted one final leg lift to put the anchor in place. Then I partially lost consciousness. Dizzy, my eyes clouded with dust and perspiration, I collapsed on the floor and began gasping for air. All I could do was pray that the desk would fall, swiftly kill me, and finally stop the thousands of tiny knives shooting through my body.

At that point my help arrived. He walked into the living room. He glanced at the chipped pile of lumber in the corner. He looked down at my scraped, sweat-soaked body and sighed. “You couldn’t wait one hour?” he said. “Just one hour?”

And answer is, sadly, no. I have never been able to wait just one hour or just one minute for that matter. It may be irritating. It may even be dangerous. Yet, it is simply an undeniable, inescapable fact about me. Even today I nearly lost my life while unpacking my classroom. I could have asked for help, yes. But what can I do if the teacher next door selfishly decides to use the restroom at the exact moment that I need to move a 90 lb. box of dictionaries?
Though I would like to live long and die quietly in my sleep, in reality I may just expire underneath a 9-foot-tall bookcase. My landlord will find me. At the funeral people will shake their heads and sigh, “If only she had been more patient.” And there I’ll be, lying in the casket with a feverish grin on my lips, clutching my “Do-it-Herself” toolkit in my splintered little hands.