The Things You Learn

Q: What’s 200+ pounds, a cardboard-brown (soon to be a Pantone® Color of the Year, I’m sure) rectangular prism of ~12 cubic feet, and appears on your doorstep under cover of darkness?

Last week I couldn’t have answered this question, but this week I can. The things you learn.

A: An unassembled BBQ in a box.

Imagine our delight (spelled c-o-n-s-t-e-r-n-a-t-i-o-n) when an unmanageably heavy box, intended (by us) to be placed (by the deliverers) in our garage, whence it could make its way out to our deck, piece by piece, was instead dumped on our front porch without so much as a text, a knock, a ring, or a by-your-leave. Given that they had to carry it up three steps in the dark and (quietly) place it close enough to the house that the front door wouldn’t open fully, the delivery mode seems both careless of their own effort and thoughtless of the customers’ likely capabilities.

Me, I was all for leaving it on the porch overnight–I mean, who was gonna take it? Who even could?–but a more-determined head prevailed. The Big Guy carefully rocked and tilted the box enough that I could prop open the screen door. With two of us to push, the box eventually crested the door threshold and got one edge on the front mat. More pushing, and it came to a rest enough inside the door that we could close the door, securing both the box and ourselves for the night. Hurray! Maybe the morning would bring counsel on next steps.

And so it did. Although we couldn’t make it budge if we pulled on the mat underneath it, atop our tile floor the box slid surprisingly well along the mat. With two mats, all we had to do was move the mat that had just emerged from under the back of the box to a spot in front of the box, and push again. In almost less time than it takes to describe it, the box was positioned by the door to the deck. A little more sophisticated maneuvering (spelled w-r-i-g-g-l-i-n-g) and the box crested the back-door threshold and came to a rest on the deck, ready for disemboweling.

The recommended way to extract the pieces from the box was to get the correct side on top, slit open the flaps, and then slice down the corners. Et voilà! Akin to the programmed unfolding of a lunar or Mars lander, ~180 pounds of BBQ pieces emerged, ready to be unpacked, unwrapped from ~15 pounds of packing materials, sorted, and then assembled into a functioning BBQ using an instruction set consisting only of pictures, words being too easy to understand, I guess. Again I note the supplier’s over-confidence in customers’ capabilities, or these customers at any rate. Even so, over the next two days, the box contents gradually morphed into a barbecue and a bunch of cardboard and plastic bags for recycling.

My only regret? Apart from not having the phone numbers or home addresses of the deliverers, I mean? I regret that I didn’t think to get a photo at every stage of this little adventure. Honestly, I didn’t think we could do any part of it ourselves, so there was nothing to document until there was, if you see what I mean. The things you learn.

When the box actually sat proudly on the deck, I thought about suggesting that we return it to its starting point on the front porch so that I could do a photo documentary of the whole effort for historical purposes. Honey? I have an idea.

I refrained. Some things you don’t need to learn. Some things you just know.