Warehouse Stationery are not specifically known as a bookcase shop, but I will buy from anyone if the price is right, and when my bargain-hunting gaze fell upon a bookcase at $39.95, half-price, room for another 110 books, I was there in a trice. My friends who deal constantly in carpentry and tools assured me at $39.95, this bookcase would not be made of wood as we know it. Possibly a shimmering type of compressed cardboard, they said, do not for a second expect it to behave like wood. But they were jealous I had found this unbelievable bargain, and not them. It was a tad thin, but while I have never studied physics at any level, I would guarantee to you that there is a law of physics somewhere that says the outside mass doesn't matter if the inside matter is strong. And in terms of matter, 110 books is strong.
And they would remain in displayable and usable form so long as I could make the bookcase, for it was of course, "some assembly required".
Many people say you should never buy anything carrying this instruction, but I am nothing if not a man who desperately wants to be unlike everybody else, so I bought it. The shop person said it would only take a couple of minutes, easy peasy, though he did say if I was desperate, he would do it for me. This was clearly an insult to everything I stood for, so I snorted, whanged the box of planks under my arm, and left the store.
I could write maybe ten thousand words on my ensuing inability to build this thing, which I tried to make in the lounge so I could watch telly at the same time, but we've all heard hopeless CDIY (can't do it yourself) stories before, so I will just say when I lifted the shuddering three-quarters-finished construction up off the floor to see how it was progressing, even though I knew I'd screwed the wrong bits the wrong way in the wrong order, the whole damn thing just crashed to the ground, breaking corners off every plank.
So I hid all the wood deep beneath boxes of broken electrical appliances in the basement and went back to Warehouse Stationery to buy a second bookcase, which of course meant I was no longer buying at half-price. This is called dramatic irony.
The shop person took pity on me, realising that if I was that thick I couldn't assemble a simple three-shelf bookcase, then my whole life must be an ongoing train-wreck of failure and humiliation, so I deserved a waived construction fee at least.
Poor bastard, he would have been thinking, poor poor bastard.
Shimmering compressed cardboard can look quite nice in the right light, and my wife showed a veneer of approval when I mentioned it cost only $39.95 fully assembled.
The bookcase has been in my office for two months now and stands as solid as a Giant Sequoia, packed with intellectual books about sport and the entertainment industry.
But last week, my wife chose to hunt for something in the basement, and within seconds she found the shimmering broken planks.
"What is all that wood in the basement?" she demanded.
"Wife," I retorted, looking up from the ironing, "which wood is this?" "Wood," she said.
"New wood. In the basement." Sighing as if we have been down this road many times before, I told her they were spare planks I had bought for the new bookcase.
Which was technically almost true, as the other ones will surely break. It was her turn to snort then. But she let it rest. I think I may have got away with this one.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
