What You Learn After Seven Hours Putting a Desk Together

I learned that my 17 year old son has more patience than I do.

I learned that what’s worth doing is worth doing right except when it comes to things you get wrong and you’ve already been at it six hours. Those things you can live with. Like the little plastic doodads that are supposed to go into the round, metal thingamajigs at the end so it doesn’t look like you put it together yourself.

You don’t have to put all those #6 screws in the back. I know. I took some out to finish the top drawer.

Lying in the floor and whining, “This is too hard,” does not help.

Sitting in the floor for seven hours is hard on your back but not as hard as standing for seven hours after you’ve lugged the thing in the room.

“Team lift” is a relative concept.

Sitting on the carpet for long periods of time makes you want to scratch your backside.

The desire to scratch is directly proportional to the size of the backside.

You can get younger children to laugh by scratching your backside and describing it with a word you’ve told them not to say. With a New York accent. But the 17 year old will not smile because he wears headphones.

Don’t cross your legs for more than five minutes at a time or you won’t be able to stand for a week.

It does not help to ask your son, after every step, what step you’re on. When you are on step #13 of 68, all you can see is 500 pounds of particleboard.

It does not help for other people to walk into the room and ask, “So, what step are you on?”

It does not help for people to walk in the room and say, “Wow, this is taking a long time, isn’t it?”

It does not help for other people to ask, when walking into the room again, “Is this the hardest thing you’ve ever tried to put together?”

It does not help to come in and look at my hat that has a flashlight duct-taped to it and say, “Dad, you know they make head lamps, right? Tee hee hee.”

It does not help to come in. Period.

Seven hours putting together a desk is a ridiculously long time. Especially when you have two people working together who are reasonably intelligent.

Seven hours putting together a desk makes you question the reasonable intelligence of yourself and your coworker.

The moment when you push the drawer in and it only goes halfway and there’s four inches of clearance above it is just about the worst.

The moment you finish the hutch and turn it over and see the back of one piece of particleboard staring at you is worse than the drawer thing.

The moment you realize you’ve screwed three screws into the wrong side of the finished piece of wood and that it will stare at you the rest of your life, or as long as you keep the desk, is worse still.

Seven hours of putting together a desk is a test of your faith in the sovereignty of God. And your sanctification.

It’s the day after and I still feel like scratching my backside.

However, when you’re putting the desk together for your wife who hasn’t had a decent desk in five years and deserves a space to call her own and you finish and arrange the computer just so, and finagle all the billion cords through the back of it and she looks at it and smiles and acts as if you just slew a dragon for the damsel in distress, it makes all the pain and questions and frustration worth it.

Just don’t tell her about those three holes in the front that shouldn’t be there or the doohickeys we didn’t put in the round silver things. And yes, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever put together, thank you very much.