By Rachel Sauer
Special to The Daily Sentinel
Progress! In my intermittent and half-hearted battle against seasonal self-sabotage, I have made real strides this year in not over-committing.
Yes! I’ve decided to make just a few gifts, not all of them, and only one requires me to quickly gain skills I do not currently possess in a centuries-old art form to which people have dedicated their lives.
So… this shouldn’t be a problem, then. I mean, I’ve watched quite a few videos on YouTube, dusted off the ol’ soldering iron and repeatedly asked myself the question that has preceded 98.3% of all the major and minor disasters in my life: How hard could it be?
I ask myself this as someone who is reasonably competent at a handful of things and invariably willing to misinterpret delusion as justifiable confidence. I’m a fast learner! I frequently pay attention! I generally keep going as long as I’m not bleeding too much!
How hard could it be?
Very, very hard, it almost always turns out.
In my teen years, for example, I asked myself how hard it could be to drive a stick shift. This, despite the fact that as a new driver I was too intimidated to tackle (in an automatic!) the gentle curve in 33 Road where it becomes G Road and begged my mom to relieve me of my driving duties.
However, I’d carefully observed my parents and sister drive a manual and felt I understood the philosophy of clutches and shifting and such. How hard could it be?
Which is how I ended up a casualty of first gear, weeping pitifully at a stop sign not 100 yards from my house.
Then there was the couch.
When I lived in Florida, my previous couch, which I’d bought on very sketchy clearance, up and died over a saggy, poke-me-with-springs couple of months and my first thought was, I should make one. A couch, that is.
Say it with me now: HOW HARD COULD IT BE??
Though the sum of my previous furniture-making experience was fashioning a long, narrow table for my tiny apartment out of plywood and 2x4s – not realizing how important it is for table legs to be 29 inches and not 32, so that when my parents came to visit and the majority of my chairs were camp chairs, we sat chin-level at my weird table like Hobbits – I figured it couldn’t be that hard to make a couch.
Armed with a sketch that I will belligerently inform you included dimensions with actual numbers and everything, I loaded up on more 2x4s, screws, bed pillows, upholstery foam, denim and the kind of hubris you read about in 11th grade English.
I sewed the cushions first, with much wailing and cursing the heavens, and it wasn’t until I’d manhandled two layers of upholstery foam into each seat cushion that I realized sitting on two layers of upholstery foam is about as enjoyable as sitting on a loaf of Wonder bread: amazing for .2 seconds and then my non-existent sciatica starts flaring. It’s an exercise in concrete endurance.
But I was committed. The less said about constructing the frame the better, except to note that I couldn’t un-claw my right hand for three entire days afterward. I accepted that joy had fled my life forever, and at the end of my briar-choked road was the world’s most uncomfortable couch. They need springs, it turns out.
AND IT WAS VERY, VERY HARD!!
However, I think this delusion of stuff being easy is necessary. If I always thought things were going to be hard, I’m not sure I have enough moral fiber to even get started. If I knew beforehand all the nincompoop decisions I’d make, all the choices that would end up making things even more difficult for myself, plus the sheer magnitude of what I was facing, I’d never try anything new.
No, better to draw outsize confidence from my scattered – but not inconsistent! – successes, from which I’ve gained just enough skill to be hazardous but fun at parties, and plunge headlong into new endeavors clutching a screwdriver and several tubes of E6000.
So, when I was perusing Pinterest and saw the item I want to make for someone I genuinely do love, my thoughts in order were:
- Neat!
- I bet they’d like this.
- I’ve never tried this particular art.
- But I bet I could do it.
- How hard could it be?
Which brings me to the statement that almost always follows “How hard could it be?”: Oh please, oh please, oh please, whoever’s listening, I need a Christmas miracle.