Bunk Bed Assembly

I am assembling a bunk bed in an otherwise empty bedroom and the metaphors abound. I am profoundly aware that I am stacking bed frames and stories upon stories upon stories.

I am here because I chose this hard, this stack of hards. I chose to leave a marriage of 17 years this last year. In this, I am not heroic. I am merely a woman who could not see a future where she could model good parenting and good partnership simultaneously, given the way a life’s fabric can shred and fray. I am here, perhaps, because I lacked imagination of a future where we rebuilt our sinking IKEA bed plank by plank. Or maybe I am here because I leaned in to my imagination, where I believed I might be capable of starting over, of co-parenting and reducing the atmospheric tension, and betting on myself.

This bunk bed will not build itself, which is fine as I enjoy the tedious meditation of Allen wrenching screws and double-checking instruction manual diagrams. My co-worker tells me I should invite a friend over to help me, but I have always enjoyed the solitude of a manual task. The times when I have had to share a job and to communicate to someone else the precise logistical maneuvers I intend to make, (rather than simply winging it) has always exposed my feverish independence. I am a firstborn with a stubborn streak and yet I am utterly at peace as I hex key my way through each bar and beam of this bunked contraption.

My bunkmate of 17 years was remarkably gifted in curiosity. He wanted to know how a thing was made, how the machine was engineered, what made a person tick. He knew how to build a thing before he set about doing the dang thing. He knew what people needed before they knew themselves. I could never project so far; my high beams were always too dim. I muddled through, killing plants and misassembling dressers so that the drawers clunked off the rails every time they opened.

This bunk bed is not a twinset but a full-over-full mattress bunk bed for the children whose limbs and senses of self are growing. Their inward and outward journeys are bewildering and beautiful to me. I am the woman who once lied on their bedroom floors for hours until they were fast asleep, but now I assemble the beds they will prefer I never come near, not even to wash the sheets they deny ever need to be washed. They are close siblings and will not allow the other to be left behind, but they will undoubtedly fight over who will get stuck with top bunk. They will stay up late debating the deeper meanings of Kendrick Lamar lyrics. Bars, man.

I carry long metal spindles and hook them into the strange catch-holes of this bedframe. This bunk bed was bought with Amazon gift cards from thankful student families who could not possibly have known how they are allowing me to build something new for my little family. How they are giving my children, and perhaps their mom, as well, a place to find rest.

I Am Fuller McAllister, Alleged Bed-Wetter

Happy Holidays. This is the annual reminder that I am now a Grown-Ass Man and, not only do I not need reminders at every friendly fete to go easy on the fluids, but I am here to clear my name as an alleged bed-wetter.

Like all caboose babies in a large fold like the McAllisters, I was the butt of every joke. My cousin Buzz? The obvious source of my angst. He was a stuffed sausage full of hormones, with an ill-advised haircut for the first 32 years of his life. (No one keeps a tarantula as a pet who is not deeply insecure.) The only time he wasn’t wielding insults at me was when he was shoving his piehole full of cheese pizza.

My cousin Kevin was not much better, though I know he is still working through the PTSD of being abandoned two Christmases in a row by his parents. He may have first spread the rumor that I wet the bed, but my dude was just Going Through It. His only “friends” were a septuagenarian bachelor and a pigeon lady. His whole life was a cry (::slaps hands on cheeks:: AHHH!) for help.

Indeed, to merely survive as a McAllister was a daily struggle. “But Fuller!” you may be saying, “Look at all that economic security your family had! And all that togetherness!” To which I will remind you that the early 90s were still the wild, wild west of white privilege. So what if I did whiz the mattress once in a blue moon? Do you think perhaps it was because of a slightly insecure attachment to the “adults” who always appeared to be asleep at the wheel? Explain to me how they never faced charges of frequent criminal negligence of minors.

You want to talk about “Les Incompétents”?! Look no further than my own parents, Frank and Leslie: the epitome of learned helplessness. Big Frank was a tightwad who never paid anything forward but tone deafness. And ol’ Les may have forbidden us from drinking cola, except on special occasions, but this was only to enable Big Frank’s addiction to the syrupy goodness he would guzzle in the garage, crushing cans of Coke and Pepsi — with a large rum chaser. No wonder he was always a crank. Who calls children “little jerks” to their faces? Especially at a big family gathering? It is only in the fullness of time that I’ve realized I am the product of a functional alcoholic and a codependent doormat.

photo courtesy 20th Century Studios

For this reason, it feels extra cruel that everyone is still telling me to “Go Easy on the Pepsi” and ribbing me with reminders that the “rubber sheets are already packed.” I am still processing the cluster of my childhood in which I was inexplicably dressed each day like an academic research librarian. This year, I am not your Tiny Tim. I’m steering clear of your spiked egg nog. I will not be disappointed at all if I did, in fact, make my family disappear.

Big Drive-Thru Energy

What you need to know is that I’m a good-ish driver. Except when I’m stressed, which is 89% of the time. In a stress zone behind the wheel, I do things like chew up the insides of my mouth and sweat buckets and become cartoonishly startled when someone honks. I’ve amassed a number of speeding tickets (not proud) and totaled a car before (super not proud) and even drove a motorscooter into a garage door (bought someone a new one who is not me) but I’m trying to be a better, more steady, more circumspect driver. Then my oldest kid wants to show me a video, probably a TikTok that makes a subtle reference to a classic meme that I need explained to me, and said kid is doing so whilst riding passenger, and my number one parenting strategy is to become intrigued by the things that dazzle my children. I just should probably make exceptions to doing that when I’m, e.g. operating a moving vehicle. Ah! There’s the addendum. 

That addendum obviously eluded me sometime in July, which is why when we were exiting the Rockland Wendy’s (where we had just purchased a highly nutritious meal that totally did not include a Frosty that was masquerading as a meal replacement) it was so strange when we noticed a car pulling up the narrow exit lane in the opposite direction. 

Like what the heck, did this driver not know this was an exit only lane? 

We were about to crash into an oncoming car, when lo! I realized that because of my TikToking While Driving, I was actually driving through the Drive-Thru in the wrong direction. 

Not only was I blocking a whole stream of cars, but I had passed all signage and windows and other Giant Throbbing Clues that would have easily tipped me off that I was the bozo. 

As I tried to reverse on a curve, a feat that should not be attended by any old station wagon whipping amateur, my oldest child and I waved hello to the drive-thru cashier who had seen us advance in the wrong direction and now reverse in the right direction. His 15 ½ year-old face was one of bemusement. Apparently I was his first. 

We then passed a bright bay window of all the rest of the employees, whose collective age was 17. They had gathered to see what I hope was the highlight of their whole collective summer: a woman and her kid in a Subaru who apparently don’t know how drive-thrus work. YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS. I believe they were even grabbing their phones to document this seminal moment on TikTok. Full Circle! Also, we are no longer welcome at the Rockland Wendy’s.