A.I.Y.

      It started with my entertainment center. For some time, I had wanted one so I could consolidate all my video and audio equipment. I confess freely to being a gadget freak. The more blinking lights and dials I have around me, the better I like it. I like it, I love it, I want some more of it, to quote a country wise man.
      This gadgetphilia led to a wall that was covered by a TV, VCR, cable box, video tape recorder, record player, compact disc player, AM/FM receiver, dual cassette deck, etc. I can make the electric meter on my house whirl fast enough to generate a breeze when I turn them all on. And let's not forget my speakers which are powerful enough to kill small rodents or other Congressmen.
      All this equipment took up a lot of room so I decided to buy an entertainment center. I went to my local furniture store (Slogan: "It's not just furniture; it's a huge debt, too") and began to price entertainment centers. I soon discovered I could either buy one or pay for a kidney transplant.
      I had just about decided to make do when someone (apparently someone who disliked me) pointed out that assemble-it-yourself furniture can be quite reasonable, or at least not as expensive as body organs.
      So I purchased what I came to call the Monolith. It was a huge cherrywood veneer entertainment center, but at first and second glance, it didn't look that hard to put together. I figured two or three hours at the maximum.
      Of course, that was before I opened the box and discovered it had over 500 pieces (not the box, the entertainment center, pay attention). The instruction book -- no kidding -- was fifty-one pages long. It was actually longer since it also gave its instructions in French. Three days into the construction, I would think of a man named Pierre somewhere who was having the same horrible experience I was and feel not so alone. The instructions were well illustrated and clearly written, and if I had only been a nuclear physicist, I could have understood them.
      A week later, I put the final piece on the entertainment center and vowed never again. If I ever move from this house, it will have to stay because it is too big to go through the door and I will never take it apart. Ever.
      The entertainment center looked good, but it had one problem: no space to store my compact discs. So I went to Walmart (Slogan: Low prices everyday except on the things you need to buy) and priced compact disc racks and ended up with an A.I.Y. CD rack. That only took a couple of hours to put together.
      And I figured that I was done with A.I.Y. kits, thinking that I preferred assembled-by-someone-else things.
      A few weeks later, however, I sat on my chair and, thanks to my A.I.Y. stomach and the age of the chair, went on down to the floor. I was stuck in the furniture frame, but fortunately lost enough weight after a few days to slip out. Just kidding; the fire department used the Jaws of Life to get me out, and boy, that smarted.
      Anyway, I needed a new chair and got one. No, I didn't put it together myself, but at the furniture store, I found two cherrywood end tables that matched my entertainment center. Matched perfectly -- even to being A.I.Y. Sigh.
      Still, they just took a couple of hours apiece. And as I sat in my new chair, looking at them, I began to think that maybe this assemble-it-yourself idea has some merit to it. They just need to branch out and produce kits like these:
      –A.I.Y. Girlfriend with a great sense of humor, a good personality, a fortune in the bank and undying affection for her assembler.
      –A.I.Y. Job where your boss would have at least the average intelligence of a slug.
      –A.I.Y. Career where you are the boss and you get to make life miserable for all your little underlings.
      –A.I.Y. Sports car in your choice of colors.
      –A.I.Y. Yacht with Bathing Beauties included at no extra cost (although you could buy the model without Beauties if you already have the A.I.Y. Girlfriend or the A.I.Y Wife).
      I think the whole problem with the world may be that it's A.I.Y. and we can't read directions. Think about it.