So yesterday, all of a sudden, out of the blue, with no warning (well, not really. I kind of had a feeling...) my beloved IKEA Markus desk chair decided it was finally time, after heroically enduring my enormous fat ass for almost ten years, to give up the ghost and go to desk chair heaven. I mean, total death. The thick metal brace that holds the back of the chair to the seat snapped after years of abuse. Alas, she served me well.
So for much of last night, I scoured the internet, sitting at my desk in my auxiliary cheap task chair which is horrendous and horribly uncomfortable, for a replacement. Long story short, I debated back and forth between opting for a cheap Walmart or Amazon piece of crap for about 100 bucks or so, or to bite the bullet and spend the extra money ($311.74), since of course the IKEA Markus has indeed gone up over the years, and get an exact duplicate replacement since I know it should last at least another ten years. The decision to go with the IKEA won out and since, just like a decade ago, the delivery rates for IKEA stuff are outrageous, I chose to go to the nearest IKEA and pick it up. Now that I live in Sebring, the nearest, though not by much, is Tampa.
Long story short again, which I seem to be failing at when I'm telling these stories regarding these memory issues. I guess because they are getting me so flustered. The experience of going to IKEA to buy this chair had me thinking about the last time I went to buy the now dead Markus back in 2014. I remembered it had been part of the overall Goldfinger purchases for my new Casselberry apartment, but I wasn't sure if I bought it the day I had gone to IKEA to select and test out my bed and loveseat. You see, I had already planned on having those delivered. Even though it would be a $79 delivery fee, it was cheaper than having to rent a truck to pick them up at the store hoist them in the back of the truck get them up to my second floor apartment and place them in the appropriate rooms. For $79, the delivery men did that for me.
But of course I wanted to lay in the bed to see if it was the quality I expected, and sit in the love seat for the likewise reason. Thus the visit to the actual store in the Millennia Mall area of Orlando. I think at the time, I also picked up quite a few other items like the coffee table, side table, knick knack items, the paper floor lamp, etc. I'm not sure if the Markus chair purchase was on that initial visit. I think it was a little bit later. And if you look at the video in this post, I think that is corroborated since that chair hasn't been set up. Oh shoot, but I'm just realizing, neither has any coffee table or side tables for that matter. Well, yet another memory gap. I just don't know.
But this brings me to the real crux of the matter. Last night when I was looking at videos researching whether I should buy another brand of chair or we buy a brand new Markus from IKEA, there was a YouTube presenter who mentioned that one of the setbacks of buying from Ikea is the exorbitant delivery price which forces you to travel perhaps quite a distance to an actual IKEA location in order to pick one up in person and then be faced with the possibility of it not fitting in your vehicle since, he said, the box may not fit as it is rather large and you need a large vehicle for it.
So now this started me down another worry path since I hated the thought of driving an hour and a half to Tampa only to find out that I would wheel a dolly cart with the large box containing the chair out to my car and find out I wouldn't be able to fit it and then I'd be screwed. And suddenly, out of the blue, I seem to recall I dealt with this before.
A memory as clear as if it were something that happened just yesterday popped into my head. I remembered discovering back in 2014 the same issue. The box was too big for Hulk. Yes, I had the same car back then. So I remember leaving the big box on the dolly cart at the loading platform, going to an IKEA employee and telling them of my dilemma to which they said oh, that happens all the time, no problem. We can deliver it for you. To which I asked but then it's delivery charges right and he said yes to which I then asked is there any other way and he said well what some people do is if you don't mind not taking the box with you you can take the chair parts out of the box put them into your car and leave the box and packing materials behind.
And so, that's what I did. I wheeled the box out to my car opened it, pulled out the styrofoam, yes remember this for a minute from now, the styrofoam packing, and plastic and other guts, took the chair parts and tools and screws, etc. and so forth, put them into the car and left the box and the styrofoam and plastic bags etc. in the car in the parking lot and drove off. I remember feeling a little guilty about leaving a bit of a mess for the employees to kind of deal with but based on the information the employee had given to me that others had done this before, I felt that it was kind of common so it kind of alleviated the guilt a bit. The only other issue in my mind was that I'd have no box if I needed to return it.
Well today, when I got to the big warehouse area and found aisle 10, bin 36, item number blah blah blah whatever, I looked carefully at the box sitting right there before me. I read the words on the box carefully. I compared it to the picture I took with my phone of the tag of the floor model. (You know how IKEA works, you take a picture of the tag in the showroom and then you go grab the box in the warehouse.) Yes this was the right item. Here's the thing though, I could clearly see with the naked eye even before hefting it off that bottom shelf that it was easily small enough to fit in the back of my car. Got it out there. Popped open the hatch. Put down the back seat. Popped the box in. Closed the hatch. Easy peasy. Got it home. Opened it up. No styrofoam. No packing cardboard other than thin separator cardboard piece. And it all looks like I remembered. The real memory that is. The real memory of doing exactly like I did today, popping it easily into my hatchback.
So again like the Shameless stuff, what is with my brain?
I'm trying to come up with some kind of logical explanation. I've been trying to think of other visits to IKEA that may have included a purchase of a large item that did fit the description of the above memory where it wouldn't fit and I had to make do by unpacking it in the parking lot. But to be honest, I think the first time I ever went to an IKEA was for the Goldfinger purchases and nothing was bigger than the Markus chair that I picked up myself. I mean, the floor lamp stands taller than the chair but it's made of paper so it was folded and in a small box. The coffee table and side table we're also, like all IKEA furniture, disassembled and compacted in a smaller box. I mean, all this stuff most likely took more than one trip, for sure, but no one individual package would have been too big for the car.
So my thought now is, maybe it was some other store, and some other large item? Perhaps even it was some other car? Gosh knows I've usually had small cars over the years and have found creative ways to fit shit in them.
Or maybe it was a bit of self-hypnosis since the dude on YouTube scared me into thinking proactively as to what I might have to do if I wanted to take home my beloved chair and my brain, for some reason, rather than visualize what I would do, it came up with a fake memory of what I did do.
And what about my assumption that some of this might all be self gaslighting? Well if you put this instance together with the Shameless stuff, all coming at a time when my brain is being starved of its decades-long regular dosing of goodly portions of alcohol, it might be an Old Georgie mechanism, AKA alcohol withdrawals, making me feel insecure about sober reality and yearning to go back to the warm glow of a good ol' dependable booze buzz.
After all when you're drunk several days a week, you blackout so many memories, you're liable to just simply erase these little glitches in The Matrix.
EDIT: Pulling up the posts for the links above I discovered that I still hadn't purchased the Markus chair by this video done 18 days after the 2014 Casselberry move in and after the bed and loveseat had arrived and were set up.