I bought a new office chair. On sale. Good deal. It arrived in a box. Weighed a ton. When I opened the box, and saw the pieces, it seemed like a no brainer. The illustrated instructions had no words at all, just a bunch of letters and arrows pointing to parts. I began to attach the arms, then realized I had the seat backwards. I reversed the screws, started again. Then came the back of the chair. The picture just showed screwing the back into the arms. But it wouldn’t line up no matter what I did. (Did I mention it weighed a ton?) My husband Ron would periodically yell from the other room, “Do you need any help?” He was busy installing a new ceiling fan.

“No!” I was not going to turn girly and be subjected to another, “Well, you should have…”

I turned the allen wrench so much, and so hard that there are still indentations in my palms (office chair stigmata!) three days later. And then, I got the screw in! 

Except I didn’t. It fell right out. I screamed in frustration. Ron couldn’t take it any longer and came in. One look and, “Oh, this is not lined up correctly.” 

“No kidding! It was impossible! They must have made a mistake.”

He looked up at me in that warm, condescending way men have and said, “No, this is all done by machine. It’s perfect.” He pulled out the screw. “Oh dear, you’ve stripped the screw.”

Stripped the screw? What the…? 

“And you’ve probably stripped the threads inside the chair as well.” 

That familiar feeling, drowning in failure, began to overtake me. I couldn’t decide whether to scream “Waaahhhhh!” or an expletive. 

“I can’t send this back, they’ll know I ruined it.” 

He sat back. “We have to call Stephane.” Stephane is our resident mechanical genius.

“But, you said I stripped the threads.”

“Stephane has a tool that can reverse the threads.”

Reversibility! You can even reverse damaged threads…if you know what you are doing. 

“You really shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help if you don’t understand things,” smiled Ron, practically patting me on the head. He went back to his fan. There was a crash. A curse. He stormed into the kitchen. I looked at the dangling wires and the chaos on the floor. Ron sighed. “When did you say Stephane is coming?” 

You make a plan. You execute the plan. You reflect on the plan. You make another plan. If you know what you’re doing, you can do what you want. Sometimes that means asking for help.