Raise your hand if you’ve gotten lost in IKEA. Now raise your hand if authorities spent six days searching for you before finding you in IKEA. If you’re not 12-year-old Peng Yijian, your hand should be down.
According to Shanghai Daily, Yijian had been sent home from his school for failing to turn in a math assignment, and after his mother yelled at him, he ran away.
True story: I “ran away” from home when I was 12 after my Mom yelled at me for wanting to hang out with my friends instead of doing homework, but all I did was go hide in our tool shed for a few hours and sulked. Yijian spent five days on the streets of Shanghai with no money, surviving on supermarket samples before heading to IKEA, the land of plentiful beds and unlimited Swedish horse meatballs.
Authorities spotted Yijian on one of IKEA’s closed circuit cameras, but even after sealing every exit, it took them 40 minutes to comb through IKEA and find him, which sounds ridiculous, but I’m pretty sure I could hide in Jordan’s Furniture for four hours if I wanted.
As for the boy’s mother? She felt bad for yelling at her son. “He was very upset and I fell guilty for shouting at him,” she said.
As for where Yijian’s IKEA stay ranks among the all-time IKEA guests, I’d say he ranks above the filmmakers that shot an entire soap opera inside the furniture store without employees knowing, but below the IKEA monkey.
[h/t Gawker]
