In The Club

Much harder to get into than the Safeway Club.

I had always seen the Safeway Club Card™ advertised, and as a child I had many times glimpsed that plastic red rectangle of consumerism whilst shopping with Mom. In later years when I’ve been doing my own shopping, Safeway checkers have often asked me if I had a Safeway Club Card, to which the response was always a disheveled, “No.” I was not in the club, and figured that I never would be.

Last year, when my Old Roommates and I went shopping, we travelled to Costco, where Josh had a membership that entitled him to all kinds of discounts, and seeing as we shared food and expenses it made the most sense to buy in bulk for cheap there as opposed to going to Safeway.

Alas, those days are over. The Old Roommates and I have gone our separate ways into adulthood, and we are now all living amongst new roommates.

Yes, I mean that – “adulthood.” Sure, I may have felt like an adult last year, living in my $400 a month, all utilities paid, WiFi included, 150 square foot shithole of a quad, but there is a reason that the jingle for Pull-Ups diapers is “I’m A Big Kid Now!” It’s the illusion of independence and control, of walking a tightrope of responsibility when in reality there’s a safety net in case you shit yourself.

Living in the dorms was essentially infancy – we were fed, we were close to our classes, we had RAs to mediate our disputes and give us stern lectures when somebody poured a bottle of barbecue sauce on their door. There were all kinds of safety nets in place because God only knew what we’d do once we were away from the nest. In spite of these safety nets, drunk assholes routinely fall out of third story windows – proof that until they build subterranean dormitories, college will always be a risky proposition.

Moving from dorms to quads in my sophomore year, as many sophomores do, I felt like truly hot shit, as many sophomores do, and was completely wrong, as many sophomores are. Sure, we were on our own for buying food, and without an RA our only recourse to settle disputes was leaving passive-aggressive notes on the white board, but the place was basically a furnished stepping stone from living in a school-sponsored warehouse for horny stoners to life as a pseudo-functioning pseudo-adult.

Now, my New Roommates and I are living in a three story townhouse a few blocks from campus, and the experience of moving into an actual apartment instead of a glorified dollhouse has been both liberating and frightening.

Fortunately, Bret (New Roommate #1) lived in a big boy apartment last year as well, and as such has a lot of furniture and kitchenware to offer. Insofar as furnishing my room, though, I was on my own – this forced me to get acquainted with the fine folks at IKEA.

Walking through an IKEA showroom, one quickly lapses into a spare, ergonomically designed, Swedish utopia. Traipsing through rooms of incomparable luxury and style in spite of the fact that they’re smaller than most prison cells, one’s response is, “My God – my life up until this moment has been an orgy of clutter and wasted space. I must burn down my house with all my possessions in it and begin anew in a 200 square foot studio unit filled with IKEA products.”

It’s all so ingenious because you get so amped up about how cool your house is going to look that you forget that you actually need to build all this shit. It’s like going to Izzy’s and getting all excited about the pizzas you see at the buffet, but as soon as you make your choice you’re led to a room in the back where you must knead, garnish, and bake the pizza yourself with only the scantiest of instructions. God help you if you want seconds.

I’ve never been especially handy (and I hope that doesn’t come as a surprise after the last two years of run-on sentences and Firefly jokes), and so it was with a great deal of trepidation that I tore open the flat six hundred million ton cardboard box that contained my new desk, which IKEA had helpfully named MIKEAL.* Inside were four sturdy pieces of wood and a bag of screws and nails. Using a hammer and two screwdrivers I’d borrowed from Bret, I set to work on the grandest construction project of my life.

*Pronounced the way Gob says “Michael!” on Arrested Development.

After an hour and a half of sitting in my room hammering and screwing* I finally stood back and beheld my beautiful, sturdy desk that I had created with my bare hands. I felt indescribably manly. I had employed guile and problem solving to create something out of a bunch of nothing. I was, in that moment, MacGyver, or at the very least The A-Team during that bit at the end of the episode where they make a nonlethal weapon out of cabbage and PVC pipe.**

*I will not make a joke here, because there are some laughs too cheap even for me.

**Actual episode, by the way.

Bringing this whole emergence into adulthood full circle, I am, as of today, the proud holder of a Safeway Club Card, which I used to purchase $44.38 worth of food with a total savings of $12.67 (or 22% - thanks receipt!). If I have any regrets, it is that there was no Club Card special on pornography. Shopping brings out the “gatherer” side of human nature, but the Club Card emphasizes the “hunter” element as we lucky cardholders stalk through the aisles in search of the ever-elusive savings.

Safeway Select™ pasta sauce has never tasted so good.

Truman Capps has yet to build his desk chair yet - if this is his final update, he trusts you will understand what became of him.