Ouchy Wawa Onna Finners

I just wanted to type [ouch] a few words [ooh] here with my fingers [ow], to let you all know just how much work it is to get these new space-age beanbag jobbers in functional condition.

Somebody here at work ordered us two "love sacs" as office seating, and while I can see how their cushy, organic nature might appeal to a drowsy shopper in the showroom, the actual reality of the product is somewhat more labor-intensive.

For shipping reasons, the suckers come compressed in cubical bags, shrink-wrapped in there like loaded parachutes. In this state they're as manageable as they'll ever be, measuring about the same size as Alaskan Malamutes and weighing about six thousand pounds. Once you have the thing out of the wrapper - no small task in itself - you must begin breaking up the stuffing inside by pulverizing it through the cover as much as possible with your hands. As you do so, the polyurethane fibers separate and absorb air, somehow, forcing the whole apparatus to gradually expand.

So you're squeezing and grabbing at this blob, trying to break it down to its most elementary particles, and it's less like kneading dough than it is like tearing phone books. The huddled mass inside this cover, yearning to breathe free, has about the same consistency as a Nerf soccer ball, and you must destroy - destroy! - it until nothing more remains but a heap of shredded whoknowswhat that's somehow bigger than when you started and keeps on mysteriously growing. In a bag.

Seriously, my fingertips are raw, my fingernails all weirdly shiny from the intensive fabric buffing. It's accelerated entropy; that's what it is, for I have now rent asunder a hunk of synthetic stuffing that would have taken years, if not millenia, to assume this "fluffy" state on its own.

And by then it would be out of style.

At least I know what it's like for my dog. Now I understand that expression he gets right after ruining another new toy.

You gaze out over the wreckage you have caused - the slobbery husk of the once-cuddly stuffed hedgehog, the blanket of cottony padding strewn across the rug, the chewed plastic contraption that once made little grunting noises when you squeezed it - and you breathe a deep sigh of satisfaction. Your jaws are sore, yes, but it's a *good* sore. It is the soreness of triumph.

The sweet ouchy wawa of a job well done.