Let me give you some advice putting together a swing set takes more then one person. That is unless you enjoy suffering aches and pains in muscles you did not even know you had. My wife told me to get some help but I assured her by the pictures in the instructions it looked like one guy could do it. Boy was I wrong.
So there I was the swing set instruction book in one hand, while the other hand was waving goodbye to my wife as she drove off on a weeklong excursion at the shore with her lady friends. As I turned around to go back into the house I was thinking this was going to be a great week. I could get that swing set together in one or two days and then have the rest of the week to lie around watching videos and playing on my computer.
My wife was on the road to the shore, my kids were both away at camp for the week, so for me it was just an empty house, one simple building project and then relaxation. . What more could a guy ask for? Well for one thing cooler temperature and a weeks vacation to finish the project.
The next day dawned with bright sunshine, high humidity and temperatures in the high ninety’s. I was dreading it already. My thoughts turned to ideas of abandoning the project until cooler temperatures prevailed. Say around November or December, but my wife was counting using that swing set for her daycare kids so I couldn’t let her down. We all no that guys are always on time with the tasks that our wives ask us to do.
So with such great (hot) weather to start off the first day of my building project I laid out the tools and the different parts of the sing set to in order to better acquaint myself with the instructions, all the parts to the swing set and whatever else I would need to get me started. Well actually that is what I should have done what I actually did was get my tools rip open the boxes and lay into that thing. An hour later and at least10 pounds lighter from all the sweating I had my first two boards bolted together I was on my way.
Once I was finally able to get those first two boards together I figured it would be all down hill from there, but unfortunately the hill I was going down would last five scorching hot, paint blistering days. Well I exaggerated a little on the heat but it was hot and it was humid. The kind of humidity that causes your shirt to stick fully to your body but even that could not dampen my joy (pardon the pun) because by the end of five days I finally had a fully functional swing set.
Well I hoped it was functional and it appeared from my observation to be put together correctly. Well it looked like the picture on the box. Now as to how well it would hold up under the rigorous use of little children remained to be seen because no children had actually played on it yet.
My week, of what I thought would be rest, turned into one of a lot of sweat, toil and pain. In fact I was in agony for a couple of weeks because I had used muscles I did not know I even had all in the name of putting together a swing set that had as it was written on the box” some assembly required’, but you know once I got over that pain and watched those children playing on that swing set it was all worth it.
That is the same way life is, sometimes we go through a lot of pain and suffering and do not understand why, but later when we look back we see that there was something we learned from what happened to us. It may be some small truth or something that we can build on later but the point is we have learned.
I know I learned a few things from putting that swing set together. One do not believe in instructions that say some assembly required, because they actually should say you are going to spend days trying to figure out what these instructions mean. Two, be careful of the weatherman when he says sunny and warm. Three, get a couple of guys who know what they are doing to help you put together whatever it is you are assembling and then provide them with support and a lot of water and lemonade.
