BUILDING KNOWLEDGE: 15 parts, 37 screws, 6 beta tests yields 1 desk

“I assembled a desk” I said, never. Then came the global lockdown. Before 2020, I didn’t build anything because I understood information only through the written word. Diagrams, puzzles, and pictures were a foreign language.

In fact, back in the day, I blew the section of the college admissions test that measured spatial ability. Questions like: “What does this shape look like when it is upside down and backwards” left me wondering that very same thing as I moved the paper up and down then rotated it while squinting at the hexa, the octa, and the whatever-ogram. In desperation, I tried to replicate these irregular blobs by folding the test paper in a lame version of origami but my bloated headless swan looked nothing like the test’s images. I shrugged it off because I told myself I would never need this skill.

In 2020, a box arrived at my home that contained fifteen parts, thirty-seven screws and a huge sheet of paper with graphic representations that looked frighteningly like that spatial test from years past. I was appalled! I rifled for written instructions from the manufacturer. I hoped for the following:

“Dear Robin, enclosed please find eighteen tiny screws, nineteen large nails, and three huge bolts for you to use in the quick and fun assembly of your desk. First, give your attention to the L shaped metal piece so that we may introduce you to Mr. Allen Wrench. Greet each other warmly because you two will become the best of friends…”

Lacking this letter, I sat silent in the middle of what looked like a car crash when suddenly I knew I must shift gears and refocus in order to translate the pictures on the page to their corresponding objects strewn around me. At that moment, I understood that poetic description and metaphor does not-a-table-make: I must learn-how-to-learn to build or there would be no desk!

My first try was a Fail. Metal bars that should be the desk’s sides and legs looked alike to me, yet the diagram showed them as different (Bar A vs. Bar B). And worse, the few lines of text to which I clung were non sequiturs: “Affix Bar A to Bar B by using the size K screw but do not tighten it.” By “affix” do they mean attach? And: why can’t I tighten everything now? Following these rules verbally and sequentially was proving unhelpful.

As parts and pieces clanged back to the floor, I had a flare of insight. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces began to dance on the page as I simultaneously envisioned the big picture and predicted the sequential steps I would follow to get there. What first looked like identical pieces now sorted themselves into table legs and tops. The shapes on the paper guided me to pick up the appropriate pieces and then “affix” - not tighten them - to their companions.

Then suddenly, “Corner D” looked like a dangling broken elbow, so I disassembled my half-built structure. This time though, instead of declaring failure, I recognized my backsteps as beta-testing. Repetition was not the problem – it was the solution! So, I tried again. And again: Test, repeat. Test, repeat. As a result of four more trials, the parts became the whole.

But something was still wrong. Right was left and left was right – my finished desk was a mirror image of its online photo. Then, I thought, “This is a Good Mistake. I’m left-handed and now the available writing space is where I needed it – On the left!” My typical inverted sense of direction shape-shifted into virtue. A right-handed person would need more rounds of test, redo and even a possible full re-build. I proudly add the instruction, “adapt” to my last line of program code: [Test, redo, test, redo, ADAPT, test, End].

My final thoughts are a poem that you may picture:

BUILDING KNOWLEDGE:

As I sit at my desk,

my foundation to write,

a new construct

in the form of a blueprint

that include diagrams

which become thoughts, then action --

A perfect shape of form and function.