Member-only story
BUILDING KNOWLEDGE: 15 parts, 37 screws, 6 beta tests yields 1 desk
“ I assembled a desk” I said, never! Then came the global lockdown. Before 2020, I didn’t build anything because I understood information only through the written word. Diagrams, puzzles, and pictures were a foreign language.
I shrugged off skill-building
In fact, back in the day, I blew the section of the college admissions test that measured spatial ability. Questions like: “What does this shape look like when it is upside down and backwards” left me wondering that very same thing as I moved the paper up and down then rotated it while squinting at the hexa, the octa, and the whatever-ogram. In desperation, I tried to replicate these irregular blobs by folding the test paper in a lame version of origami but my bloated headless swan looked nothing like the test’s images. I shrugged it off because I told myself I would never need this skill.
In 2020, a box arrived at my home that contained fifteen parts, thirty-seven screws and a huge sheet of paper with graphic representations that looked frighteningly like that spatial test from years past. I was appalled! I rifled for written instructions from the manufacturer. I hoped for the following:
“Dear Robin, enclosed please find eighteen tiny screws, nineteen large nails, and three huge…
