I see an IKEA

For too long, I had heard tales of the Swedish superstore—the IKEA—without ever setting my eyes upon this big box monument to sleek, flat-packed, affordable furniture. Truly, this was a wrong that needed to be righted. So, it was this noble desire (or my need for a cheap desk set) that led me to rent an SUV two weeks ago and drag Big Brother to Charlotte, North Carolina to visit the closest IKEA store.

To make things harder, the IKEA was not in my Magellan GPS. It then became a race between me and Big Brother to see who could use their smartphone faster to find an intersection near the store to enter instead. (Big Brother won.)

Then we drove and drove and drove and didn’t die on the highway, despite the high concentration of morons we were sharing the roads with. Finally, after two hours, we beheld the IKEA!

Or, the “KEA” as it would appear to be titled in this photo. It was a huge, blue and yellow store set in a large lot near the [...]

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