April 3, 2002

• Today I did something I never thought I would do.
  
  I ate at Ikea.
  
  I went there to scope out and see what furniture I might be able to score for my new room. Found a bed I liked, a rug, maybe a bookshelf, window shade, room divider, a wooden cube with drawers on castors, that sort of thing.
  
  See, being me, I have to go and scope it out. I have to have an idea of the possibilities, so that I can mull it over endlessly before actually making any purchases (or, in fact, Getting On With The Rest Of My Life). That’s how my mind works. There’s an element of safety in the rehearsal, ya see. And we’re talking about Ikea here, folks… How dangerous can it be? Well, tell it to my neurology!
  
  Anyway. There in the middle of the perfect furniture-buying experience is the restaurant.
  
  Maybe I’ll digress about how perfect this furniture-buying experience is. There are no salesfolk, or at least, they hide and watch you until you look like you have a question. Ikea is not the land of the hard sell. No, Ikea is Furniture Play Land, where your inner child is free to fuck around with everything. Sit in every chair. Pretend to type at those fake keyboards on the display desks. Fall asleep on every bed. Pick up, hold, and then put down every kitchen utensil. It’s a visceral place. It’s also arranged in a huge labyrinth of consumables. I could write a whole other essay about the progressively-ramped expectation induced by this twisty-path approach to marketing, and I might one day, if I ever get a job designing Ikea stores.
  
  So in the midst of my reverie on the simultaneous genius and malevolence of the mind-control techniques at work in this fucking store, there I am staring at the Ikea restaurant sign. My belly grumbles, with its own genius and malevolence. The restaurant is in the exact center of the twisty path through the store. You’re in for a long walk out either way, conceptually, and if you’re hungry, and you were going to eat some fast food anyway, you might as well eat there. (Sure there are short-cuts through the store, which can take you out within seconds, but recall the ramped expectation I mentioned earlier; it’s a potent juju!)
  
  The restaurant is cafeteria-style. I get in line, which is blissfully short and uncomplicated. I get a dessert first, a cute round vanilla cake baked in a pastry with icing on top, with a nordic-sounding name. The woman in line ahead of me orders the store’s signature Swedish meatballs, and substitute fries for the potatoes, please. The server asked, “10, 15, or 20?” The woman looks puzzled. “10… Fries?” “No, meatballs.” All was explained. There is a metric system for meatballs at Ikea.
  
  I ordered meatballs, too. I got the 15. I counted them while I ate. I was like The Count from Sesame Street… “Eleven! Eleven Swedish meatballs! Muaaahaha!”
  
  The other thing about today’s Ikea trip was that there were a zillion crying babies everywhere. Just everywhere. Like they pump something into the air there, to make babies cry. Finally, having heard enough, when a woman with a little foghorn of a baby in a stroller joined me in the hooks and pulls section, I addressed the problem. I waved at the baby. He immediately stopped crying and looked at me. Mom looked at me, too. I said, to the baby, “Hi. Having a bad day?” He sat up straight in his stroller. Mom continued to look at me. Why wouldn’t she? “Well, it’ll all be over soon. You’ll be back in the car seat before you know it.” He started laughing. The mom said to the baby, “Hey, looks like you made a friend.”
  
  That kid’s a genius. And I’m not just saying that because he likes my jokes.
  

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