Ikea is a store that most people have a love/hate relationship with. While we love their meatballs, we hate having to somehow assemble a pile of beech sticks into something resembling the furniture we saw in their display.
The store itself is set up with a complex web of arrows and pathways that twist & turn, like walking through an enchanted, meatball-scented Swedish forest.
While it offers lots of cool products at affordable prices, shopping at Ikea requires more strength & stamina than most mere mortals possess. And that’s not even factoring in the self-assembly of the furniture (been there, done that, have the scare to prove it).
Choosing to furnish your home with Ikea products can be hazardous to your health– and your testicles, apparently. Who knew?
In the latest bit of “Wow, that’s awkward!” news making the rounds on social media, Ikea consumer Claus Jørstad of Alta, Norway managed to get one of his testicles caught in a hole of Ikea’s Marius stool.
And before we go any further with details, NO, the incident did not occur in an actual Ikea store, but in Jørstad’s home, which we are all very relieved to know.
After injuring his knee, Jørstad purchased a Marius stool from Ikea in order to shower while seated.
While it seemed like a good idea, the reality played out far differently. As he remained seated, the heat of the shower water caused his balls to naturally expand, which then resulted in one becoming entrapped in one of the holes of the stool’s surface.
Now granted, the picture makes it challenging to gauge just how big those holes really are, but if Claus’ testicle swelled that much, just how hot was that water, anyway??
Of course Claus was surprised by this unexpected “HEADlock”; as he explained to The Daily Mail:
Sitting there and noticing the accident, I bent down to see what happened, I realized the little nutter has got stuck.
As you can imagine, this was a potentially embarrassing predicament; can you imagine having to explain this one to the EMTs? Well, Claus couldn’t, so he sat there in shock, as the water grew cold. And colder. And even colder. And still Claus could not move, a predicament which almost killed him. No, seriously; he almost used a hair dryer to warm up.
Thankfully, the colder temperature was enough to allow “the little nutter” to gradually shrink back to normal size.
Or, as he so humorously put it:
The water turned cold by itself. So I started freezing. The water got cold. Even more cold than my mother-in-law’s smile when I married her daughter.
His testicle naturally extracted itself from the stool, saving both his nut and his dignity… well, until he decided to go public with his story, anyway.
Jørstad shared his traumatic experience with the Ikea Norge page on Facebook; since he states that Swedes don’t generally like specific genitalia references, he explained the situation by saying that “skipper and boatmen” were caught and he had to drag the chair out of the shower to freedom. In case the terms aren’t clear enough of a visual, Claus explained it to The Daily Mail:
As you can imagine, the skipper is the captain down there, and the sailors are the two nuts that dangle.
Yup. GOT IT.
When the deck got slippery and the captain and his crew got dizzy from all the foam, they started sliding around like drunk sailors!
Then something terrible happened. A sailor unwittingly made his escape and slid down one of the holes in the stool.
Admit it- you’re visualizing it. You’re welcome.
While Claus’ story by itself certainly would have attracted a good deal of attention, the post went viral when Ikea Norge responded.
Translation:
Hey Claus. We recommend that you take the stool out of the shower… or that you sit on it with the right uniform on and in the right setting.
If you choose to keep it in the shower, make sure you are well dressed for your next sea excursion.
That’s enough for a chuckle, but it gets funnier- Claus then responded to Ikea’s response with this picture:
A protective measure for Claus’ next shower, for sure, but it’s even better; the washcloth has a specific significance.The character featured on the washcloth is called “Fantorangen”. As Claus explained to The Daily Mail,
“Fant” is slang in Norwegian for “wiener”. You get the picture.’
Oh, we do, Claus. The mental visual is a little TOO powerful.
But the situation is intriguing, & Claus’ willingness to poke fun at himself made this an amusing, albeit bizarre, anecdote. Social media users readily agree; the post has received over 25K likes and 12K shares. But Claus’ trauma is a valuable cautionary tale- make sure you don’t let your balls dangle anywhere near your new Ikea stool… if you can assemble it in the first place, that is.