Helping my son get situated for his new job. Furnishing his living space with second hand items. Purchased a sectional sofa at a discount price. Wife thought something looked off in the picture. When we picked it up, the seller had it completely disassembled and in a neat pile. We transported it bac to his place to re-assemble it. Conveniently the seller erased the the add so we couldn’t see the photos. It took an hour and a half to put it together. We got stuck on an armrest end piece. We couldn’t get the brackets to line up or connect. We tried a variety of different strategies. With no luck I decided to take it apart, removing the brackets from both pieces. Guess what? They were installed wrong and nothing we could have done would have gotten this thing assembled properly. Nothing. It turns out they were installed backwards and upside down on one piece. They stack in each other like a funnel. It wasn’t obvious until you could manipulate the brackets by themselves to see how they fit - or don’t fit together. After making the correction the side fit together perfectly. Like magic. My son asked me how I knew to do that…. The only thing I said was instinct. It made no sense why everything fit together perfectly except that side.
I say it all the time… I should have been a mechanic. I understand how things work, how they fit together and how to diagnose and correct issues. This is how my mind works. It’s how it’s always worked. And I realize what comes natural to me is something a lot of people struggle with. Why didn’t I channel this energy into something productive earlier in life? I could have had an amazing career as a mechanic.
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