Years ago, I started to assemble my first ever IKEA bought furniture — a side table. I approached it with the confidence of someone who believes personality alone can substitute for instructions.
I glanced at the manual — a cheerful stick figure smiling like he knew I’d fail — and decided I didn’t need it.
Twenty minutes later, I had:
- one leg facing north
- one facing east
- one doing its own spiritual journey
- and one screw that did not belong to the table but refused to explain itself.
My husband walked by, took one look, and asked with unnecessary calm:
“Did you at least check Step 1?”
(He already knew the answer.)
Turns out Step 1 said: “Check all parts are in the box.”
And guess what?
A bolt was missing — which explained everything except my confidence.
Fine. Table fixed. Incident forgotten. Moved on. Years passed by.
A few weeks ago, my son (7 years old) was doing a crossword.
A peaceful activity for normal people but for him, it’s competitive meditation.
He was staring at the puzzle like a tiny monk, when suddenly he said:
“One wrong word makes the whole crossword harder to solve.”
He said it casually, while I was still remembered my IKEA trauma from years ago. But I swear, there was a moment where I looked at him and thought:
Is he… judging my life choices?
Because he was right.
He’d put ONE wrong letter, and suddenly none of the clues made sense.
He wasn’t solving a crossword — he was decoding the Da Vinci Code.
I stared at the crossword.
Then at my mental visual of the IKEA table.
Then back at this child, who clearly came pre-installed with software updates I didn’t get.
And here’s the truth:
I didn’t learn a grand wisdom.
I didn’t have an epiphany.
I just realized something mildly horrifying:
My child and an IKEA manual had both outsmarted me.
That’s it.
That’s the post.
Some people have spiritual awakenings.
I have household objects and a seven-year-old humbling me before bedtime.
~ Ashmita, accepting that sometimes the plot twist is that I am the plot twist.
#UnscriptedEncounters #AccidentalWisdom #ParentingHumor #ModernLife #AshmitaWrites #ObservationalHumor
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Morgan Vander Hart on Unsplash
