There comes a time in every man’s life when he needs a lamp. It is simply too dark a world for someone to thrive upon his inner light alone. Now, the choice of lamp is not one to be taken lightly. It should provide soft light, not too bright, preferably dimmable. The wavelength of the light emitted should match the sun as closely as possible, so as to combat that winter scourge, the aptly named SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Finally, it should be Trendy. Hip. Not Square (well maybe square). Thus, as inevitable as death and taxes, all men must make a trip to IKEA. Like the fires of Mount Doom, nowhere else would be sufficient for the task at hand, and a great journey is so thrust upon the adventurer (me). This is a chronicle of that journey.
IKEAs are not traditionally placed in the most accessible locations. Perhaps most IKEA treks begin this way: people piling into a car and beginning a long, arduous drive to another part of the state. Not so for This Guy. I live in the Hub City, the most functional little corner of the Tri-State Area, so I am more than capable of reaching an IKEA within a half hour. My drive is wholly unremarkable save for the apparent affect that IKEAs have on their surrounding area. The closer I come to the IKEA, the more like an industrial wasteland the world becomes. A foul stench pervades the air. It is as if gaseous tendrils are issuing forth from the IKEA, poisoning the surrounding landscape. It becomes dark, barren, and ridden with potholes. I am just beginning to wonder if I have driven onto the Newark Airport tarmac when lo, before me materializes a great warehouse, a house of oh so many wares, the IKEA. A monument to function over form, a great grey monolith towering over the surrounding shipping containers of the seaport upon which it is apparently positioned.
IKEA always has to be crowded. It is, after all, the aforementioned destination of many an adventure. Of course this day is no exception. I draw my noble steed up to the farthest possible spot, and prepare a bivouac in case we needed to camp for the night, drawing strength for an arduous climb ahead. It is at this point that I should mention that no one should go to an IKEA alone. All things in friendship. Like the Samwise to my Frodo, my partner is prepared to battle the seething masses ahead in search of our fateful goal. She was an unwilling adventurer, like me, grim and noble. Prepared to face what lies ahead, and to defend me unto death. May the Valar bless her. After fortifying ourselves on some Elven lembas, we begin our hike. Somehow, the people entering an IKEA are so boring it borders on assault. These people are aggressively uninteresting. Weapons-grade bland. I am not overly nosy, but I tend to have hobbitish ears, so I overhear multiple conversations portending my own doom. A lackluster, ghoulish existence where I must cart around my own demon-spawn searching, in vain, for a new paper towel holder. A wraith of my former self, I am condemned to petty squabbles with my spouse over draperies or, worse, what the neighbors bought. Seeing these orcs and their selfish infighting sets me a-shudders. Truly, these people are a lost and lonely sight, fallen far from the path of the Ainur of old.
Forging ahead, we soon reach the threshold of our destiny. A great wheelhouse rotates endlessly before us. What arcane magicks of the Dark Lord powered this fell creation are unapparent, but we brave forward. Somewhere, a dark creature cries out in rage at our affront to this desecrated place, but we are undaunted. A grand staircase unfolds before us, with a bedroom setting in the middle of the landing. Clearly it is not intended for the privacy of any mortal man. My faithful companion points out to me that IKEA requires an unusual ritual for entry. One must obtain:
- A curious tarp-bag that never becomes full. YOU MUST NOT REMOVE THIS BAG FROM THE PREMISES.
- A sheet of paper covered in strange runes, directing the adventurer hither and thither to claim their loot and treasure.
- A golf pencil.
After these magical items are ours, we take an infernal stair, rising up into the airy unknown all of its own accord. More of Sauron’s dark magic, to be sure. As we move up, the situation grows increasingly oppressive. Orc-men begin packing in from all angles. It is a strange experience, being part of a herd of men. I am in no hurry; indeed I treat this haunted realm with all the nervous trepidation it requires. And yet when all these people start surging forward, rolling infants in hand, it is hard to move at your own pace. Where, I wondered, are we being directed? This river of men, it perplexes and infuriates. Finally, we are able to extricate ourselves and elude the rear-guard of the orc army. We are in a land of couches. People sporadically sit and…relax? Why on Earth is anyone ‘Just Chillin’ in the demo couches at IKEA? Surely Literally Anywhere Else On The Planet is a more relaxed environment. I would rather be working on my tan in the Mojave Desert than just kicking back amidst a sea of IKEA shoppers. Also, I hope you are ready for a family of four to come with the couch you are considering purchasing, because they are apparently a set. I am unnerved. I see kitchen tables; I add tongs and some sort of cheese-shredding egg to the Pouch of Infinity. This is not where I need to be. We move on, resisting the urge to weigh the pros and cons of a hardwood cutting board.
The trip grows ever longer, the weight of the ring tugging at my breast…sorry, the weight of the Platonic Ideal of Lamps growing on my mind. I surge forward through the crowd, pulling my trusty accomplice with me. We reach a cafeteria. IKEA knows the shopping ordeal, and clearly expects it to take days. They anticipate the shoppers will shop for so long that they will need Sustenance to Sustain Their Vital Forces. It occurs to me that between just hangin’ on the couches, eating in this food court, and sleeping in the fake bedrooms, one could, in theory, live in IKEA. I shudder and push the thought to the back of my mind; the unfathomable reaches of the unconscious where such masochistic impulses go to sleep. Somehow I have passed from kitchen, to bedding, to a room full of bins for some reason, and back to bedding. I almost give up hope, and the crushing weight of my shadowy passenger becomes unbearable. Then hark! My trusty Sam calls out to me, and she grabs my arm. Nearly delirious, I absentmindedly follow her direction. And behold, a brilliant light sparkled forth. White and warm, beautiful and regal. Mithrandir, the Lamp, has appeared as a salvation to all in the darkness. Driven to near madness by the excitement of finally LEAVING this place, I grab the box for a suitably avant-garde model. I grab light bulbs in the proper Temperature range. But my burden is not yet relinquished. For you see, in our delirium, we mindlessly wrote down the item number for a set of stools. We are now enslaved by evil forces, at penalty of eternal curse, to fulfill our end of a dark bargain. We descend, shaking, into the bowels of the IKEA. Row upon row of foul devices line the walls and rise to the ceilings. We search, desperate, for our boxes. Success! Our ordeal is almost done.
Dearest Alluvia, what fresh torture is this? We are waiting in line. Someone is paying with the deed to their house, and we must wait for a lawyer to arrive to sign it away in triplicate. Children loiter ahead of us. Before long, they are children no longer; they succumb to the mind-rending and are transformed into mere apes. Climbing the walls, they begin hooting and howling at us. They sense our fear. A man next to me starts expounding, in depth, about the familial need for a microwave cover. I set my jaw, ready for a fight. None comes. The minutes pass like hours; I wonder if this is one final trick played by the Dark Lord. My Sisyphean task lies before me. I must roll this cart forward, never changing place in line, never reaching the end. A deep despair takes the both of us. And just when we begin to teeter on the precipice of oblivion, ready to descend into the final abyss of abysses, I hear, as if in a dream “Next!”. It is done.
IKEA, seeing fit to outsource absolutely every part of the shopping process, has a loading/unloading zone. My compatriot wades through yet more people, her mission to retrieve our horse. I do not envy her this task. Finally, we are loaded up, victorious, Triumphant. I arrive home. The stools do not come with slipcovers. This was in fine print on my dark contract. Wishing to die sooner than return to IKEA, and knowing the Nordic people custom designed these stools so absolutely no cloth constructed by mortal man would fit, I order the slipcovers from the IKEA website. I pay ten dollars for the privilege. I am undone.
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I would like to thank an intrepid reader for pointing out to me that there is a man who did actually live in an IKEA. Mark Malkoff, or as I like to call him, the Real Living Gollum, willfully, and voluntarily (!) chose to spend as much time as possible in an IKEA. May god have mercy on his soul, whatever shreds are left of it. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to find out more about this pitiful husk of a man.