USEFUL, HELPFUL AND DUMB

Why is it that sometimes when something is supposed to be useful or helpful it turns out to be neither? Maybe it is just me, but with some stuff it sure works out that way.

The other day my buddy Otis decided we needed a new entertainment center for our living room. I could hardly blame him since the one that we already had we got from this thrift store. It is missing some shelves and kind of worn out. So I understood when he said it was time we finally bought a decent one.

I think what prompted him the most to do that was because we just got a new television. The only died on us. And I reckon that Otis figured he didn’t want to risk upsetting a new television by sticking it on some old entertainment center.

Not that I’m claiming televisions have feelings. That might be kind of silly. I do think they may have brains though. Because it sure seems like the old one always knew how to act up right when something I really wanted to watch was ready to come on.

Anyway Otis figured this time we would do it right and buy a brand new entertainment center. So we went out and found a really cool one for a decent price at this discount store.

I should say that the one they had on display looked cool. Only I didn’t know that it came in a box and you had to put it together with the “use” of some “helpful” instructions.

Well they might have been useful and helpful in the mind of the dumb people who wrote it, but when we opened the box let me tell you it sure didn’t look that way. Man was that ever crazy.

To start with who was the genius that decided anybody opening box needed directions that were other than in English? That was so darn confusing. It took forever to find the part that I could actually understand.

Then the parts they had included didn’t help much either. It seemed like they had way too many side B’s and D’s and other crap when they only showed one of them in the directions. Personally I think the dude who wrote those directions probably was drunk or had a really sick sense of humor. So he was probably sitting there laughing his ass off saying something like “I bet the clown who tries to put this together will go nuts before he finishes it.”

Now I will give my buddy Otis credit. Man he didn’t give up. He kept gluing and hammering and screwing all those screws in the thing. Oh there were a few times when I’m sure what he was mumbling wasn’t something I could try to repeat in a posting, but he didn’t give up.

And the great thing is that we do have a new entertainment center. (Well I suppose I ought to fess up and say that Otis ended up going out and paying this next door twelve year-old kid to figure out how to put it together, but that will just be our little secret.)

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: "A penny saved is a penny earned till the IRS gets through with it!"