Ode To Chair

Today I met my match, at least for awhile. Our desk chair had seen better days. Days far in the past. The upholstery was ripped and worn, the back loose and squeeky, two of the wheels were duct taped in place to keep them from falling off. The wheels with the duct tape prevented the chair from rolling in certain directions, mostly the direction I wanted to go. This then became the routine of "hopping" the chair forward to get close enough to the desk to reach the keyboard. We put up with this for a long, long time. Today I broke down and purchased a new chair at Staples. While one is in Staples looking at the chairs, they are all lined up, ready to be tested. When you make your selection, they bring you a box. A large box. A box with chair parts in it. A box with chair parts in it and a single diagram for assembly. Now, I am a college graduate. I have a couple of degrees and work with computers each day. I was not intimidated by the idea of assembling a simple desk chair. I should have been. I should have been forewarned when the single page of assembly instructions said "Make sure all parts marked with an arrow are pointing in the same direction". I started to assemble the chair with confidence. I immediately put the base on the seat backwards. "Remember: Arrows in the same direction". Ok, I'll remember. Unscrew all the screws (4), reverse and reassemble. Chastised, I started to put on the first armrest. I looked at it first. Tried to get a feel for the assembly process, to visualize the completed chair. I put it on backwards. I tightened all four screws down as hard as I could, took a step back to admire my handiwork, and it was wrong. Totally wrong. It was obvious. The visualization had been a lie. I'm good at this! What is happening here? Again: Unscrew all the screws (4), reverse and reassemble. Damn. The rest of the assembly seemed to go pretty well. I put the seat (with arms) on the base without incident. I then took the last piece, the back of the chair, and screwed it to the arms. Four screws, four screw caps pressed on. No problems. I pushed the completed chair back to admire it and damn it to hell, the back was on backwards. It was laughable. I laughed. Insane laughter, yes, but I was laughing. Laughing at the futility of it all. Laughing at what a complete and utter moron I appeared to be. Resigned, I pulled off the caps, unscrewed the screws (4) and reversed and reassembled. With the chair now completed (correctly) I took stock of my situation. Perhaps I was too tired to have attempted this apparently arduous task at all. Perhaps I should have been wearing my glasses. Perhaps I was in too much of a rush. Perhaps chairs are not my strong suit. Whatever. The really sad thing is that I bought two of these chairs and I still have to assemble the other one. God help me.