my son’s brand new bunk bed —
a fixed-financed contraption of pine
abutting a suburban textured white
wall — towers skyward like Jacob’s
famous ladder.
— or at least, it would, were
I able to figure out the goddamned
assembly instructions. Fucking
Chinese. What, communism isn’t
sadistic enough…?
Remember Jeff, you’re not just building a bunk bed, you’re building memories.
And Satch’s vocabulary.
did the mandarin creep in here from CTHD?
What, you don’t speak Engrish?
Sorry: Engrish.
I suppose no one will ask the question.
Is it this bad?
Yeah, a bunkbed seems like a good idea at the time, until you realize it’s a six foot plunge to the floor in the middle of the night and the ladder is slippery if he’s wearing pajamas and mom is worried about it and why don’t you sleep under the bunkbed for the first couple of nights “just in case” and – fuck it – I’ll buy a goddamn queen size air mattress and put it under the bed to act as a springy-cushiony thing in case he decides to fall lemming-like off the side but that’s not good enough, so why the hell did I go to Ikea in the first place and whatthehell’s the matter with a bed that’s on the floor and I’ll buy him a goddamn trampoline with safety netting to get him vestibularly integrated …jeezuswhere’smybeer.
– deep breath –
have fun, Jeff.
Lefty loosey, righty tighty
most of the time.
BumperStickerist,
Unless of course your wife buys those stupid “flower” plug-in room smell-ifier things from that bath store in the mall.
I’ve taken to just smashing the damn refills on the carpet and letting the smell dissipate that way.
Good luck with bunk bed, Jeff.
– The even better news Jeff, is just about the time you finally think you’ve located two pieces that look like they were at least made in the same factory, and after you’ve made peace with the “short three screws” Chinese torture problem, you’ll discover that there are no tools of the proper fit extant on the North American continent necessary to ever have a hope in hell of successful assembly.
– But then thats why God invented snapps.
Just stack the beds on top of each other and duct tape ’em together.
I’ll ask a question about the question.
Jeff G – I founf that a heavy rubber mallet and a small sledge tend to fix most issues.
Karl – the only question I can think of to ask is why the need for bunk beds?
“why the need for bunk beds”
Well, that’s obvious – the damn ‘dillo has started biting Jeff when he passes out on the couch.
The instructions may seem inscrutable but if you keep trying, I’m sure you’ll be able to scrute them.
Bunk beds because I never got to have a bunk bed as a kid. And the ladder is just too cool.
daughter swore her way last weekend putting together bunkbeds for the twins … she had kept it together pretty good until frustration took momentary custody of her brain and she slammed the hammer to the floor …
The flooring guys who had just installed new wood laminate flooring earlier in the week were happy for the additional work.
I can hardly wait ’til this Saturday when I have ’em to find out what new words the boys learned.
I put my kids bunk beds together upside-down. Part of them anyway. They stayed that way for six years, then we moved and I put them together the right way. And they broke. So I fixed them and put them back together the wrong way. It’s all part of my own personal war on science.
Oh, and my wife and I hate them because she’s too short to change the sheets and make the top bunk, and I hate them because it proves that I should have had her aborted before we got married for being too short. So now I am the one who has to make the top bunk. Of course, if we had aborted kid three or four we wouldn’t need the bunk beds at all.
I’ve got a three inch scar above my left eye about scalp level that I’ve had since age seven from a fever-induced thrashing fall from the upper bunk onto a metal trundle bed frame one of my three brothers was sleeping on.
And the bunk bed didn’t even have a cool ladder.
on the plus side, I always know when the younger two are still awake, due to the thumping, bumping crashing and bashing that goes on. If you’ve ever had someone drive a Ford Taurus into the side of your house you know exactly what it sounds like to have a six year old and a three year old boy take turns jumping off of the top bunk onto a bean bag chair.
I have my own suture set.
An unnecessary affront to capitalism’s future Leader
Perhaps the bed should’ve been made of Cedar
To waft wooden fumes up to a son who may or may not be named Peter
Don’t blame it on the rain, blame it on Derek Jeter
And I’m glad you put this one up, because I’m having a bit of a crisis…
hell, I’ll put it in the Pub.
Dear JD (#12): Every other problem in the world can be solved by lawyers. Or caused by them. I forget which.
from liberal fascist to neoconservative Marxist( whatever, don’t pay attention, Jeff, I had a few Cabernet’s already) :
next time consult furniture expert ….
(Sashal shyly walks away)
See? See?
This is why good technical writers are important. Native speakers of English, no less, who know how not to assume that the readers already knows what you’re talking about.
Outsource MY job to China, oh no they won’t!
My dear wife just brought some news about bunk beds… lessee if I can remember.
Top cause of injury: falling.
Age group sustaining most bunk-bed related injuries: 7-14
Age group with the second most: 18-21.
And who know how to match the verb number with the subject.
Hey, I still have a concave scar on my right shin where I gouged the flesh off. I was descending from the top bunk, my leg went between the mattress and the frame of the bottom bunk, and 6 stitches later I was off to go roller skating.
But other than that, I was fine on the top bunk. It was funny to watch the cat jump up there and have to scrabble with her back legs to make the last few inches.
Sweet poem, Jeff.
#9 BBH – Crescent wrench, hammer, drill, etc.
By God, we’ll make it work!
“If it doesn’t fit, force it; if it breaks it was meant to be replaced.” and “If you cant fix it duct it, if you can’t duct it f*** it.”
Two phrases I learned out at Camp Dearborn.
Now, the best bunk beds I ever saw were out at the camp. Old Army cots (a couple had pre-1941 stencils on then from the Q.M.C. – I mean the fighting Q.M.C. – and all had U.S. embossed in them. You set the first cot up, slammed the bunker-poles in place, and lowered the next cot on top. Theoretically, there was no limit to how high you could make a bunk bed.
Damn! Were those things solid! And the Camp still uses them in the rental tents, and all of them are WWII surplus!
#19 LMC – a bunk bed makes for great first strikes in a pillow fight. Just swing up or down – no matter the light, you know where your foe/sibling is.
#25 eLarson.
I am surprised by that statistic. I would have thought the 18+ would have the most injuries.
Because of the beer. And the a@@&)#^s who pull fire alarms in the dorms at 3:00 a.m.
Five years ago, I assembled (with much cursing) a set of bunk beds for my two youngest.
I had one of those “I had it so much harder when I was your age” moments. When I was growing up in Montana, four of us kids slept in a bunk bed with a pull-out trundle. That left me with little brother–a notorious bed-wetter and serial nighttime “thrasher.”
Of course, when I regaled my kids with this story, they could barely contain their eye-rolling.
Ingrates.
Oh, and this past weekend, I put together a four chair and a table pub set.
“Some assembly required.”
…took two days.
Dirty Malysians.
I’m an occasional lurker here, Jeff G.
There was a recent news item on EurekAlert, about the dangers of bunk beds.
Be very cautious.
Bunk beds pose dangers to kids and adults.
1st national study finds startling injury rates in patients from 1-21
Even kids sleeping on the floor can be dangerous. When my son was 7 he had friends over for the night. Slept in sleeping bags on the floor. He managed to get under a low table while asleep. Woke up, sat up. Forehead slices really bleed, a lot, wife very upset. Kid to Emergency Room for stitches which he took well and was proud to show off.
Fun to think of now that he’s 26 and has his own 5 year old.
Do you know what else is really dangerous? Being alive. The fatality rate is a ghastly 100%. May as well give up.
I didn’t mean to imply that kids should be put in a rubber room till 21, the opposite in fact. They will get bumps, scrapes, bruises and cuts no matter what so you patch them up and love them. Life is to be lived and kids will be kids.
Wish I’d had a bunk bed. I had to wait till my college dorm room.
My son is a climber, and when we went to the furniture store, he immediately took to the bunk beds. He has no fan is his room, but now I’m frightened. He is a bit of a restless sleeper, but he’s only fallen out of bed once that I can remember — without a guard rail.
Now he has a guard rail, and I’m more worried than ever.
How much for an inflatable floor?
I had a slumber party in 6th grade, and after that, I wasn’t allowed.
Probably on account of my friend setting the potato-chip bowl on fire, but who really knows.
I think that he shall never make
A bunkbed purps’fly or by mistake
For nothing gets the “Chingas!” out
As much as hammers, bolts, and pouts
The damn directions are in Chinese
Or translated into Englishese
If purchased elsewhere, he’d have some idea
Should not have gone to damned Ikea
Three-foot flames and everything. We were busted when I ran upstairs to get a big glass of water and was unable to answer the query of what was going on satisfactorily.
Look, I said “nothing” as nonchalantly as possible and they still didn’t buy it.
Parents.
Jeff, it would probably be cheaper to put him in some bubble-wrap pajamas.
suburban textured
I had a suburban texture once.
Once.
Those are some mad rhyming skilz you have there, Goldstein..
Velcro jammies and sheets.
geoffb, I was responding to Daniel Dare and I guess took too long.
I had a bunk bed for years when I was a kid, and there were never any problems. Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that the top bunk was home to most of my toys while I slept on the bottom bunk, so that may be the solution to your worries. Tell Satch that the top bunk = awesome play area/storage opportunity. When you’ve got a top bunk, your foax won’t bug you about your toys being on the floor. It’s a win/win.
Also, I had the top bunk in my dorm room during my freshman year in college, there was no guardrail there, and as…uhhhh…chemically challenged as I was many nights that year, I was always okay.
That’s not to say that you should allow the little tyke to go probing around in the couch cushions…
@Mikey #32: Yup. I think the only reason it is lower is that we tended to destack the beds after a few weeks. To make the, er, fall a little lower.
#35 has the link I think my wife had been telling me about.
Worst injury I ever got while asleep was in a bunk bed. Of course, I was in the bottom bunk. And the injury was a burn from a light bulb.
Still…
I fell out of the top bunk, once. Came wide awake just as I passed the point of no recovery, balance-wise, and executed an uncharacteristically (for me) nimble, cat-like in-air twisting that had me landing on hands and feet.
I would have avoided any injury, too, if it weren’t for my brother’s clock radio sitting right where my nose, driven by the rest of my head, would have perhaps just failed to hit the floor. That extra couple of inches cost me a broken nose and some amount of time lying on my back, in the dark, in extreme agony, drying to dash the puddle of blood from my eyes.
Fortunately, the cartilage popped right back into place. Saved me another bout of agony, that.
Only injury I ever got off of a bunk bed was a broken coccyx. I tried to drop a flying elbow on my unsuspecting younger brother, just like Leaping Lanny used to do. Not really smart.
Assembling my kid’s bunks was the easy part.
Making the fucking things is what gave me the headaches. Well, that and banging my head on the shelves getting around them.
Jeff, How many nuts and bolts were left over when you’re done? If it’s less than five you’re in good shape I say.
BTW, TWO whole mattresses to hide your porn stash. Talk about heaven. Oh wait, he will have the Internet. Kids now don’t even have to work at strategically depleting their old man’s Playboy collection. What a world.
cranky-d
I wasn’t sure and just wanted to clarify.
“This is why good technical writers are important. Native speakers of English, no less, who know how not to assume that the readers already knows what you’re talking about.”
Wasn’t this already covered years ago in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and the problem is who the writer is allowed to interview to get the information in the first place. GIGO
Since I’ve turned into a crusty old man (that was about seven years ago, when I turned 25) I’ve lamented the fact that the little peckerwoods have it way too easy when it comes to discovering the strange mysteries of the tits and ass.
We literally unearthed a stash that was buried beneath a field below my house when I was a kid. These days, I fear the kids of the 21st century will not have to display any such industry in the age of easily-available Google smut.
Why, the government ought to begin some sort of federal porn-burying program.
Sean,
That’s change I can believe in.
Bunk bed Haiku
The scariest words in the English language (at least to Jews):
“Assembly required”.
Bunkbeds rock! I had the top bunk as a kid, only fell out once (no injuries), and it was sturdy enough to support me and my high school girlfriend. Always take the top bunk, as a friend of mine in the Marines learned after waking up drenched in piss that had soaked through the top mattress which was occupied by an extremely drunk lance corporal with poor bladder control. Of course, the offender ended up on the concrete deck but was unscathed, no doubt due to his state of stupor. Good times, good times.
Jeff,
I figured out long ago that any Asian instuctrion sheet is twice as funny as PW.
My favorite was an instruction sheet that had two pages. The first was filled with the usual hilarity, but the second sheet began with: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ…”
My favorite set of instructions, so far…
Slartibartfast,
What a great site.
Trouble is, now I want that shirt that says “Wake Up Motherfucker”
Lay the individual pieces on the floor in a loose facsimile of a bunk bed. Start by assembling the biggest pieces first. Go from the general to the specific. The enclosed instructions are just guidelines. Once you sit and look at it for awhile the zen of it will become obvious. Well. That and half a bottle of Jack Black.
BTW One of the best ways to keep little hands occupied is to let them help you. They’ll soon get bored and wander off to the TV.