Here’s the dilemma: I was trying to move a Queen-Size bed into my new room on the second floor. I get the mattress in the room and got the iron frame into the room, but the wooden-bedframe won’t fit up the stairs. I solicited my 19 year old brother Chris for help. We try pushing the bedframe, pulling the beframe, forcing the bedframe, but the stairwell isn’t wide enough to get it through. We were able to bend the mattress, but the bedframe is made of wood, so it wouldn’t budge; no way, no how. After many failed attempts and some scratches on the freshly painted hallway, we give up. I can’t just lay the mattress directly on the iron frame because it’s too soft and would fall right through. I know that I needed some boards, slats or pieces of wood, but didn’t have any. I was stumped!

Then my brother nonchalantly suggested, “How about hockey sticks?”. At first I think he’s joking, but then I realize… he’s right! Chris and I have been playing hockey for the past 10 years and in that time, have cultivated a rather large collection of broken composite hockey sticks. $200 pieces of carbon fiber just resting in the garage. I measure the iron-frame, cut the sticks to scale, and lay them across broken sheet rock I found in the basement. I hesitantly placed the mattress on the composite slats and told my brother to lay down to test it out (I didn’t want to be the guinea pig). It worked! It was so simple and brilliant, even a caveman could have done it! But a caveman didn’t do it, my brother did. As my Granddad used to say, “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes”. Thanks for the help, Chris.