"darling, I don't know how to tell you this but...": I might still be banned from IKEA....

Last week, I mentioned the constant misinterpretation of (500) Days of Summer, and thought maybe this week, I would do some media analysis of the film. Well, right now I am not going to do that. For one, I am lazy. Secondly, there is a plethora of other articles and YouTube video essays who are going to do it much better than I could. What I will say of the film is that it is an incredibly charming, ✨aesthetic✨ film that is perfectly cast, acutely told through nonlinear storytelling devices, and really turns a mirror back at the viewer asking us how much we really love others and how much of that love is really how much we love the idea of others and how projected fantasies on other people do not equate to compatibility. Also, Zooey Deschanel's entire wardrobe in the film is *everything*.

That being said, let me tell you how this film fell into my radar. I feel as thought that is a more compelling tale than any media analysis I could offer you.

My friends introduced this film to me as, "hey, Melody, there's this new film out that is about some guy who is obsessed with this girl who loves The Smiths!" (I am not being sold on this.) "It has a great soundtrack!" (Okay, but I can just listen to the soundtrack, I don't have to see the movie itself...) "So, there's this scene in IKEA,...where the two leads do the same thing that you and I did and we got banned from IKEA..."

Okay, now you had my attention.

One scene in (500) Days of Summer has the two leads, Tom and Summer, "playing house" around the IKEA of Downtown Los Angeles. The scene is very charming and funny. That's about as relevant as it's going to be for the rest of this story.

Let me truly set the stage. I promise you, scout's honor, that this story will be more than well worth it.

It was 2010. One of my dearest friends at the time (though we are no longer friends, which I will get to later) was struggling with their sobriety. The demon whom they lived with did not care, and, in fact, routinely tried to undermine my friend's sobriety efforts. This person was so heinous, they would sit in front of the mirror like Madame Medusa in The Rescuers, and say things like, "oh, how HARD it MUST be to be MY sister, {sister's} name, because I am SO BEAUTIFUL and you are just so plain!" (I wish I were exaggerating. The sister, for the record, was and is the more attractive of the two, my bias aside.) 

Enough was too much. struggling to keep my friend sober, I decided to pull a Matilda and benignly torture this demon until she moved out. And move out she finally did, but decided to take every last piece of furniture with her.

Since at this point I was still banned from Hillsdale Mall, we had to go to the Palo Alto IKEA. We knew we could not be trusted to actually get anything accomplished if we went to Target, and IKEA was the only thing in the price range. There was a posse that day of about 5 of us to help move the purchases, one of whom being our friend who was well over 6 ft 8.  To protect the more than guilty, we will call him....Oliver. We will call him Oliver for the sake of this story (which he would find absolutely hilarious). So it's me, 'Oliver,' a couple of our other friends, and the friend we are all trying to keep sober and together, a rag-tag little band of a Get-Along-Gang trying to buy new furniture because I bullied the mean and nasty roommate until they left, but then had stolen all the furniture. A right proper macabre little spectacle.

Anyway, so the friend who was trying to shop for furniture to refurnish their apartment is shopping in earnest and the rest of us....are....well... just Mickey Mouse-ing around. Now, I don't know how familiar folks are with IKEA, but it's a one-way labyrinthian rat race set up sort of like a Disney park attraction--once you start off on the path, you cannot backtrack. If you need to go back, you have to go ALL THE WAY AROUND back to the beginning and start again. This, of course, had some mildly amusing results, but the person who was there to shop in earnest was getting pretty pissed off at all of us constantly wanting to go back for the $1 ice creams or the car to go get something. Finally it got to a point where they yelled at us to stay put, but that's where the real trouble started.

So, like the scene in (500) Days of Summer, we decided to play house in IKEA. I was "the mother," one of our other friends was "the father," and our friend who is almost 7ft tall was "our son." So here well all are, "playing house," and we get to the kids' area. "Oh, darling, wouldn't this be SO CUTE for little {Oliver}y's room? {Oliver} dear, sit on the bed and test it out to see if you like it!" Well, 'Oliver' DID sit on the bed.... and it broke.

We heard the snap.  You know that scene in The Lion King where Simba sees the on-coming stampede? Well, I think  all three of us made that face. At first, it was surreal, was 'Oliver' hurt?  Was that HIM snapping? 25 seconds  later, we realize our fears were real--the bed had cracked. My "husband" immediately ran over to get to a floor attendant to tell them what had happened, and profusely apologized, even offering to pay for it.

Then, the yelling started. Apparently, the manager-manager thought we were horsing around, my "husband" insisted that we weren't. He then started in about what if we had just left or, or what if an actual child had gotten hurt. The friend who had been there to shop in earnest starts yelling at us because they had left us alone for FIVE MINUTES, etc. etc. etc.

Etc.

Like being banned from Hillsdale, 'Oliver,' my "husband," and I all had to sign a paper saying that we were unceremoniously henceforth banned from this IKEA. As to whether or not we are still banned, it's  Schrödinger's IKEA ban. We didn't think to get copies of the ban-papers.

The friend who had come to shop there in earnest DID end up getting their furniture, which 'Oliver' DID help load into the car, and then unload, and help me put the crap together.

As for our friendship, that no longer exists. Like a couple others like them with sobriety issues in our old friend group, it turns out that it wasn't the substances that made them as nasty as they were--that it was them. This was who they were, unfortunately. Unlike some of the others, I wish them nothing but the best, as long as it's as far away from me as possible.

I would be curious to know how they tell this story, though.