Billund

Moving in with someone means IKEA is mandatory. There’s no way around it. You go to the warehouse, you walk the showroom, you measure wrong, you come home with things you didn’t plan to buy. That’s the deal.

Simon had just moved in with Donna when they made the trip. Somewhere around the bedroom section he started making puns. Billund. Klippan. Ivar. Swedish furniture names, stretched into jokes that weren’t funny—deliberately. Each one worse than the last. Donna’s patience didn’t improve as he went. But they got out of there faster than usual, which I think was the point.

I’ve done it too—made stupid jokes in stores I don’t want to be in, as if humor could actually speed things up. It’s weird logic but it works. If you’re annoying enough, your girlfriend just wants to leave. Get her irritated and she stops examining every throw pillow. Strategic insufferability.

There’s nothing romantic about it. But there’s something honest. You accept bad puns from someone because the alternative is silence in a warehouse, and silence is worse. You endure it and move on. By evening you’re both on the new couch trying to figure out where all of this goes.