IKEA Brooklyn

This is my year of being a grown up, I guess. I have fifteen jobs and I bought a printer for home use and I order from Fresh Direct and I have a dentist and I even wear foundation. I'm so effing old that my idea of fun now, my idea of a date, my idea of a late night adventure if you will, is to board the 8 o'clock ferry on a Sunday after dark, and set sail across the East River to the IKEA in Red Hook; we push off and a sloop silently cuts past us, the Statue of Liberty emerges from the other side of the Battery, I and the rest of the passengers climb to the upper deck and take in the green salt air and the waterfalls and watch Manhattan retreat to an in-perspective view - all of that anxiety and arrogance taking place on a little island, after all. My date and I rendezvous for $1.99 meatballs and lingonberries and mashed potatoes (we are surrounded by working families wise to the frugality of the IKEA cafeteria; their kids wander off afterwards to watch cartoons on the couch in the living room section), and then we saunter through the showroom labyrinth. I emerge with a colander, some canisters, AAA batteries, and lightbulbs.