IKEA Meditations

One of the charms of being able not to retire and teach is being just a little unstuck in time with respect to my professional peers.  While Dan and Wendi get ready for the bris of their little boy, I'm in Ann Arbor helping the boy through whose bris I kept my eyes tightly shut move into a new apartment as he prepares to start medical school on Monday, following his White Coat Ceremony tomorrow.  (Note to self:  why don't we do something like this for entering law students?  But what would we call it?)

I have helped him move each of the last couple of years, and the routine is always the same - rent a truck for a couple of hours, move the 500-pound bookshelf from hell, pack and unpack the boxes, wake up the next morning (as now) wondering why I went seven rounds with a welterweight boxer.  This year was slightly different, as we decided to go to IKEA to buy another bookshelf and a dresser (which we assembled late last night, and which may account for the sorry state of my lumbar this morning). 

As I fade into blog sunset once again, I want to reflect just a minute on the IKEA experience, which I can only describe as a kind of Swedish Disney "It's a Small World", except that you get to buy the dolls at the end.  (The map, right, courtesy of Wikipedia, shows the places in the world you can find an IKEA store.) First, I couldn't understand why the place had to be halfway back to Detroit when every other self-respecting big box store has managed to find a place on the Ann Arbor outskirts.  The reason is, I think, that the place is the size of a small state itself.  Second, like being at a Disney park, you can't help think about the hours of mental energy that went into designing the layout.  You go up an escalator, like that first ascent on a roller coaster, and then go wooshing through a maze of rooms (complete with "short cuts"), looking at the displays, and writing down aisle and bin numbers.  Third, you can't escape.  It's been a long time since I was at DisneyWorld, but what I remember was how the designers kept you from actually seeing how long the line ahead of you was by snaking you back and forth until you turned a corner and realized there was a whole 'nother room of cordons and lines.  All you want to do is get to the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" warehouse with the aisles and bins to put your "some assembly required" bookshelf and dresser on a cart, and you cascade from lighting to plants, to glassware.  Fourth, the books in the office and family room displays are real, and in Swedish.  There must have been 500 copies of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections in Swedish.  And finally, there's a cafe serving Swedish food, including something in lingonberry sauce.

All I can say is that I really was shaken up, and that was before I started assembling the dresser. 

Thanks for the month, and see you again soon (New Orleans in January?)