Day 143 - Failure

 FAILURE

Prompt - Failure : Write about a time you failed at something.  Did you try again or give up completely?

Berster Lamp Table.  His first flatpack.  Should be simple enough.  Shouldn't it?  It looked simple enough when he'd first seen it.  Four curved metal legs rising up to support a circular wooden table top, with a small drawer underneath.  There's be instructions and he'd follow them to the letter.

So he sliced open the box, spread the cardboard wide.  Surely there were bits there he wouldn't need?  It seemed like an awful lot of bits for one wee table.  But he'd best crack on.  

He found the instructions.  So maybe he wouldn't be following them to the letter, because there weren't any.  Letters.  Or words.  Just numbers for all the different parts (although no explanation as to what they were, but maybe that would become clear...), and cartoonish diagrams showing a little person putting it all together.  The diagrams looked... well, he'd best give it a go.  But firsdt he'd get the screwdriver and hammer it said were all the tools he'd require.

He'd be methodical.  Not rush.  Didn't want to do anything silly.  Took everything out, one by one, tried to identify every part against the numbered pictures showing how many of each there should be.  Laid them neatly in what he thought was some kind of order, although in reality all he could do was group similar bits together.  Apart from the biggest items - table top, drawer sides, legs, that sort of thing - he still couldn't say what most of those bits did.  And why on earth was he going to need sixteen of those strangely broken wheels?

The slowest bit was counting out the tiny metal pieces.  Tiny nails, small boltish things with domed heads, thin bars of different lengths.  One of the longer ones was missing.  He checked again, looked inside what remained of the box, checked under the bits he'd already laid out.  Nope, it definitely wasn't there, although he did have what appeared to be an extra shorter bar.  Maybe that would do?  The missing part resembled a big nail, and he had some of those, so maybe he'd get one out and, when the time came, see if he was best using the small extra bit, or his own nail.  

He made a start.  It took him twenty minutes to figure out exactly what the first cartoon wanted him to do, having it upside down at one point, trying to get his head around it.  Eventually, by risking increasing levels of his very limited brute force, he got it done.  Time for a break and a drink...

He put it off as long as possible, found other tasks which suddenly became urgent, but back he came, ready to emulate the weird cartoon character as best he could.  And, to his surprise, it started to go well.  Things fitted together at the first, sometimes second, attempt.  The diagrams started to make more sense.  With bit of hammering and twisting he had something that looked very like a drawer.  It was when he came to mount it in the almost free standing frame he'd built that he had to make his choice.  Use the short extra bit, or his nail?  He tried out both, tried them both again, neither was exactly right, but neither exactly wrong either.  Which to go with?  After several minutes of not really having a clue he picked up the nail and went with it.  What was the worst that could happen?

And there it was.  A lamp table, with drawer, that looked almost, but not quite, like the final cartoon picture.  It seemed solid, enough.  He felt a surge of unanticipated pride, mingled with satisfaction and surprise.  It was hard to believe, but there it was.  His first bit of furniture that wasn't a hand me down or from a charity shop.  He went into the kitchen, filled the vase with water, and stuck in the bunch of flowers he'd bought that morning for just this moment.  Took it through and placed it carefully, delicately, on the new table.  Stood back a couple of steps to admire.  Just a bit too far.  He saw it happen, in slow motion, he watched and could do nothing.  That nail, his nail, squeezed out under the new weight above it, the table top took to tipping left, the vase began to slid, the legs began to part and, before he could react, had collapsed to the floor in a welter of twisting metal, unjoined, wood, squelching water and forlorn blooms.

He'd never buy flatpack again.