This man in Beijing was once standing on an assembly line in an enormous factory. Picture it. A vast space lit by dangling fluoro lighting strips. He is a normal Chinese factory worker...or what I imagine a normal Chinese factory worker to look like....and he is doing his job.
And thinking about this man's life makes me feel a little guilty because he most certainly earns less money than I do. Maybe he is separated from his family who live out in the sticks somewhere and he sends his wages back to them regularly. And each night he goes to sleep thinking of them. His wife and his daughter who beckon him in his dreams to come home. Forget about the big city papa and come home, they call. But he can't because there is no work in the country. My Hollywood conditioned mind sees this scene quite clearly. Perhaps before he goes to sleep each night he looks longingly at a beaten up photo of his family. My imagination could have used a voiceover in this scene to explain the anguish this man feels but any scriptwriter worth his salt will tell you 'show....don't tell'.
Anyway, this factory worker is counting silver wing nut bolts that go into a small plastic bag for the Action Dynamo Swing Set with Monkey Bars and Slide. And on the day I am referring to, the factory worker must have spaced out and accidentally put fifteen of these galvanised bolts into the plastic bag instead of the required sixteen. An insignificant mistake, correct? Look, we all have our off days, right? I can't even imagine what it must be like to work in a factory like that. The tedium! My god! Can you imagine? This man has real world problems and here I am, banging on about this missing wing nut bolt. This poor bastard has to live in an over-industrialised, filthy-ass-air, substandard medicine-and-education, injustice-in-the-form-of-an-ineffectual-lingering-communist-regime-county.
And me? I have Australia problems. Which is to say, no real problems. Not really. Not by comparison. A patchy internet connection. A parking ticket now and then. A co-worker who talks a little too much at work. Other than these small complaints, it is clean air and sunshine all the way. So all things considered, my life is pretty good.
You know how they talk about the butterfly effect? How a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere in the world and this causes a chain of events which, following an intricate pattern of cause and effect, result is a hurricane on the other side of the planet?
well....
Anyway, the bolts and all the other parts of the Action Dynamo Swing Set with Monkey Bars and Slide are put into the cardboard packaging. This flat pack unit trundles along the assembling line, with the other flatpacks, moving through the echoing space of the factory, before being loaded into a shipping container which is shipped to Australia where it is eventually stacked on a shelf in a large retail shop. Another vast space lit by artificial lighting. And this is where I entered the picture with my shopping cart. I selected the swing set up and heave it onto my cart assuming all of this boxed swing sets would be identical. I paid at the self-serve register and go outside, where I find the sky is covered with dark clouds and I notice fat summer rain drops are just beginning to slap down on the warm pavement. By the time I'd reached the car, it was raining heavily and the first thunder clap cracked the air open, sending people scurrying for cover.
I bought this swing set because we had been telling our daughter Jessica all summer to go outside and play. And her response? Basically, our daughter reached for her iPad to google how to play outside. When she did this we knew we'd let things get too far with the screens and the devices. We were understandably concerned that we were creating another fat little screen zombie. You should see her cousins.
Anyway, I loaded up the swing and drove home feeling victorious. And once the storm had passed, my wife and I went outside and set to work. We decided on a suitable spot, near but not under the jacaranda tree. We pulled all the parts and components out of the packaging, at my insistence because when it comes to assembling items like this, I'm always methodical in my approach. I laying all the parts out, making sure they are easily accessible. After this, I skimmed through the instruction book getting a sense of the overall steps involved before starting properly. Melissa, my wife, started getting impatient. This speaks to the kind of person she is. My wife Melissa will jump right into a venture feet first whereas I will take my time and gather the information I need to complete it properly. This has been an ongoing bone of contention between us since the second year of our marriage when these personality quirks came to light. Mel is of the opinion that too much caution impedes life. That it sucks the very life out of…..life. This from a woman who has had (last time I counted) 11 car accidents in her short driving career. Most of them minor scrapes granted but still….A person who seems allergic to any kind of preparation or forethought.
Anyway, the instructions were easy enough to follow. You taking your time, work step-by-step through the entire process and you will be fine. (As I say, I am the kind of man who believes in taking things step-by-step. Melissa….not so much). At various points, I would look up to find her walking around aimlessly, holding a random part with no idea where the bloody thing goes. Not a clue. In other words, being counter productive.
Despite all this, we got this swing set about three-quarters of the way complete but then...then we reached the point where we needed that crucial sixteenth wing-nut bolt and it wasn't there, was it?
This necessitated a return trip to the store which wasn’t at all successful because, even though I’d remembered the receipt, the manager decided he wasn't going to play ball. He stood by some ridiculous store policy that required the swing set to be returned in the exact same condition it had left the store. That is, it should be ready for resale which, in his mind, it wasn't because the cardboard packaging had been compromised and would probably need to be bound up with tape with a little sign attached which read, 'sold as is'. It didn’t matter that his company had sold me a swing set which was missing a part. No. This knucklehead couldn’t get past the fact that either he or one of his underpaid staff members would have to deal with the headache of returned item. As such, he stood by this petty police which everyone knows is usually sidestepped to keep the customer (me) happy. I made the usual threats to write a letter of complaint to his supervisor. In response to this, the manager (A blindingly bald man, hence the nickname ‘knucklehead’. It was like his head was a large stubby thumb with eyes and a mouth) smiled and said, go ahead. Be my guest. And that was the end of that.
So I drove out of the useless chain store parking lot, cursing and composing the letter of complaint in my head, with the faulty swing set still jammed in the boot of my car. Still minus the crucial part. I decided to find a similar screw at the local hardware shop. I spent another hour wandering around the isles, consulting with staff members (ask me a question! I’m an expert!). At the end of my search, it was determined, there was no comparable bolt. For some reason, the Action Dynamo Swing Set with Monkey Bars and Slide had highly specific parts. What I am saying is a generic part would not do the job. The homeware assistant rattled on, providing me with a solution which sounded like committing to further complications....something about widening the hole with a drill so I could jam another bolt in there, after bending it with pliers to follow the curved shape of the metal support tubing but being careful not to…..blah blah blah. I began to wonder if the smarter move mightn't be to buy a ticket to Beijing that night. How long would that take from Sydney? 9 hours? Anyway, I could fly there and go straight to the factory by taxi where I could pick up the part. And maybe have a word with the Chinese factory worker. Something like 'I appreciate you're under duress but maybe you could pick up your game a little.....' Actually no. That is just the anger and frustration talking. I am not that guy. What I really should do is talk to the factory Manager and say, Mate! where was the quality control in all this? Eh?
So you can probably see where this is heading. The swing set never was never properly completed. I had another attempt using a substandard part. Jump forward four, five months, the metal supports will have sagged, collapsed and will eventually be claimed by weeds. The plastic swings and the bright decals on the slide of the swing will become faded in the harsh UV light that assaults Australia all summer long.
But before all this, my inability to erect the swing set, to take care of the situation, resulted in series of arguments with my wife, each on getting progressively worse. Essentially, these were the same argument over and over again with slight variations. And of course, these arguments weren't really about the fucking swing set. They were about the reservoir of minor resentments and tensions and bullshit that build up in any relationship. The swing was only the catalyst. And I'm not saying I blame the Chinese guy in the factory. Maybe this humble worker doesn't even exist? Maybe they have a machine that spits those screws into the plastic bag? I don’t know.
In any case, the Action Dynamo Swing Set with Monkey Bars and Slide would make an appeared in most of Mel's future accusations and diatribes against me. And predictably I would take the bait. Time and time again I would take it, rising from the peaceful depths to bite down on the sharp hook of our mutual unhappiness. The swing was emblematic of the fact that, despite all my planning and caution, I had failed to make my life work. Failed to make my wife happy. Failed to keep my kid from becoming fat. I had failed.
Eventually, Mel and I separated. A trial separation which turned into a longer separation. Our lives became a series of angry encounters in doorways and through car windows. The cracks would become fissures that would run through our lives. The damage was too vast to describe in detail (Although having said all that, one day, years later, I was stuck in a hotel room in Malaysia during a monsoon with a half bottle of duty-free Bushmills and I did attempt to make a flow chart on a napkin. A flow chart to show how all the cracks formed and connected and eventually separated us. I used a heavy felt tip pen which bled ink directly into the thin napkin as if were a vein had been opened up and black blood was flowing out of my hand. And there was no way to stem the flow).
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