Some Assembly Required

Whatever happened to the phrase "Fully Assembled"?

Did it disappear with the twentieth century?

Is it simply old-fashioned and out-of-date?

Did it get lost in China?
(No, I  don't have anything against China, but shipping anything halfway around the world even marginally assembled seems to be as impossible a feat as my surviving a week without coffee).

I often wonder which corporate entity first decided that the ordinary consumer needs to be greeted, right after purchasing a new piece of furniture, with the ominous words "Some Assembly Required."?

The phrase "Some Assembly Required" is itself replete with half truths:

"Some"
Hmmm ... seems to be all that lies in The Box is the raw materials and that ALL assembly is actually required of whichever poor member of the household first gets tired enough of looking at the box, breaks down, and opens it.

"Assembly"
This word implies that the pieces actually fit together as designed, and the use of a supplementary hammer and related force fitting tools are not at all needed during the course of assembly.

"Required"
It'a amazing how long our household can leave all those parts all by their lonesome selves in the big (ominous) cardboard box.  Assembly becomes optional, a task to be done only when a rainy day arrives and when patience indoors is as plentiful as the clouds are outdoors.

This time around, with our purchase of what appeared to be a very simple wall unit, I had high hopes in Costco.  After all, The Box looked just about the right size to contain the fully assembled version of the desired furniture.  But, as I gave in to the impulse to peek inside The Box, my hopes were again dashed, my renewed faith in corporate America, however slight, was quickly doused as I opened The Box, and a seemingly endless stream of wood slices, metal pieces, and jingling hardware bags issued forth, equalled in part only by the equally endless packaging from which they were to be extracted.  An hour passed, and finally all the pieces lay on the carpet, chuckling among themselves.  Another hour passed, and the assembly progressed:

Even after the rain ceased outside, the assembly marched on inside:

Finally, as we marched stubbornly and determinedly toward the finish, we found ourselves at Step 21 of 21 in the lengthy, multi-lingual instruction manual (in retrospect, the language in which the instructions were written didn't seem to make much of a difference).    Step 21 read "Adjust the leveling foot until the top shelf surface is level."   The designers of said furniture had included every tool and piece of hardware in creation EXCEPT a level.   So, we did what all exasperated consumers do.  We looked all over the garage, in every toolbox, storage container, and crevice for the level that we don't own. After 20 minutes of searching in vain, we gave up, and like any other self-respecting homeowner, hacked a solution:

Welcome to the latest design of a level.  Formerly, a favorite cat toy, it has now found a new purpose in life.   After some adjustment to ensure the ball ('level') did not roll off the top shelf without provocation, our latest Some Assembly Required project became complete:

Amazing, how much more grateful we are for this piece of furniture than if we had just pulled it out of the box, stood it up, and plugged it into the wall.

Do you ever wonder what your mother would have done if you had come forth from the womb with the words "Some Assembly Required" tattooed on your arm?