So you get home from the store with a large cardboard box and you realize your ability to assemble this piece of furniture is significant. It's a barometer of your future relationship. Maybe you won't make it. Maybe you'll start fighting. Burst out crying. Abandon the whole project and send this pile of arbourite, plastic and pressed wood out onto the sidewalk. You open the box together and try to decipher the Swedish instructions, which don't seem to represent the thing you are trying to build. But gradually, it comes together, and soon the two of you are standing in front of a beautiful armoir - or bookshelf - or whatever it was you felt you were lacking. There's a mysterious aggregate of left-over pieces that you are uncertain what to do with, but they don't worry you to much. You are filled with an emotion that is no so much pride as it is relief. I think every couple reaches that sad day when you go to IKEA and come home empty handed. You search through all of those weird household tableaus searching for something, but find nothing you want. You don't even bring home a box of candles. You lack nothing. You are fulfilled.

Nelson Henricks