The facility where my father resides called the other day. “It’s about your father,” a woman on the other end was saying.
This is it, I thought. “Yes?” I said gravely.
“Well, it’s actually more about his stuff,” she said.
“What stuff?” I asked. “Is he okay?”
“Oh, he’s fine, I guess,” she said. “I’m pretty sure. Anyway, I’m actually calling about the stuff in the apartment.”
I pictured a woman in her late twenties staring down a box of Krispy Kremes and a can of Diet Coke. “Might it be that he is using it?” I offered.
“He’s not in the apartment,” she said, slightly agitated. “And there’s all this furniture still in there…”
“Hold on,” I said. “Where is he?”
“He’s out of assisted living and in dependent care now,” she said. “He was moved ten days ago.”
I looked at the calendar – it was the twentieth. For a moment, about mentioning the notification of kin about such a move, but decided going there would prove equally futile.
“People want that apartment, you know,” she said.
“But he’s renting it,” I mentioned. “He’s already paid for the month!”
There was a moment of silence. “Well, I guess we can pro-rate it – but we really need that space…”
The conversation sort of devolved from that point on – I said a couple things about stupidity and obesity that I probably shouldn’t have and her wailing didn’t help either. The bottom line was that I was either (a) going to have to hire someone to move his stuff or (b) move it with my brother. I chose (b) because I am essentially a cheap bastard.
We arrived unprepared for this particular move. First, there was an alarm on the door that the guard on the intercom couldn’t figure out how to turn off – every time we opened the door we were greeted by a minute and a half of eardrum piercing beeps. Next, for being a nursing facility, it struck me as odd that no matter how hard we tried we could not keep any of the damned doors propped open which, of course, meant that you’d have to hold the door open with your foot while juggling, say, a floor lamp or a coffee table. For larger items, such as the heaviest couch with a fold out bed in the world, it was safe to say a couple layers of skin from your knuckles or a door knob induced hip pointer was your reward for negotiating through the narrow doorway. (How on earth the staff got a bed or a wheel chair through there was beyond me.)
Ever move a filthy, rolled up oriental rug by yourself? Try doing so while tripping over dust bunny enveloped extension cord.
As I strained to carry lift the TV into the car, thoughts the move that almost killed me were recalled from the darker recesses of my memory. My other brother, Jim, and I had bought a house in D.C. several years ago. We were both single, so we did have very much stuff – or so we thought. I spent the days leading up to the move packing up boxes or books, wrapping glasses in newspaper, throwing away crap I’d kept since the second grade. We closed the night before we were to moving, and I distinctly remember asking Jim if he were ready – “sure,” he said with an admonished astonishment.
I suppose it depends on one’s definition of ‘ready’ but when I showed up at my brother’s Arlington, VA apartment the next morning, he was anything but ‘ready’. A pizza box sat on the coffee littered with a couple of beer cans, a tomato sauce spattered paper towel or two, an overflowing ashtray, and half a dozen magazines. The rest of the apartment was in similar disarray: the kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes, glasses, and silverware; his bedroom looked as though some heavy metal band had had a cocaine-induced orgy with twenty or so groupies. The bathroom was a Petri dish of various fungi. The only evidence suggesting the advent of a move were three pathetic boxes sitting unloved in a corner of the living room.
“Dude,” my brother said in this sort of pained manner that is usually reserved for the Confessional. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.
“I’ve got a boil,” he said. “And it’s huge and it’s in my ass.”
“In your ass?” I said deliberately like a trial lawyer might.
“Well, not in it,” he said. Brothers and spouses share such secrets. Sisters? I’m not at all sure. “Sort of between the cheeks, but closer in, you know, towards the rectum.”
As I was about to unleash an invective of profanity, he gingerly bent down to pick up a Big Mac carton on the floor and grimaced on the way back up. I paused for a moment, trying to stay calm. My thoughts drifted, and I pictured myself moving the items from the apartment down seven floors, the pervasive stench of ethnic cooking – Indian/Latin or maybe even Bulgarian? – oozing from the very walls of the building. Moving my brother’s crap by myself? Sorry, bro, but that wasn’t happening. In my view, there was only one thing left to do: pop the damned boil.
“Ow!” my brother screamed when I tried to kick him in the ass. “Are you insane?”
“Pop it!” I shouted, chasing him around the coffee table, while he made a pitiable attempt at covering rear end with his hands. “Pop that sucker or I will!”
He relented immediately, wincing and hobbling like a sprinter who’s just pulled a hamstring. He opened a drawer in the coffee table, retrieving a pin and a lighter, and then withdrew to the bathroom in a bowlegged waddle. From the bathroom I heard the pathetic whimpering of a man lacking all courage: this was not a warrior, pulling an arrow from his chest, or a shooting victim; this was simply a man with an evidently painful pimple on his butt.
Needless to say, my brother was about as helpful as, well, a boil on your backside the rest of the day. However, realizing that he would, in fact, be worthless – especially since we would have to move all of his stuff before we got to my stuff because his stuff would be first out, and the feigning of a pulled muscle or an aneurysm would follow – I went to Plan B and desperately called anyone in the metro area I could think of. “I was wondering if you could do me a huge favor…”
“I’d love to,” the respondent would say. “But…” The excuses were typical: my in-laws are in town or I pulled a muscle in my back or I just ruptured my spleen with a knitting needle – gotta go. (Note: the correct way to ask is to say, “What are you doing today?” When they say nothing, attack; any other reply will give them wiggle room to escape.) Yet it is a true friend indeed who would voluntarily agree to help anyone move – this is not someone you should ever blow off or shun, but someone you should cherish as if he or she were your very own personal Jesus. It is in this light that I cast my friend Monika who actually volunteered to help – and no, to the best of my knowledge, she is not insane.
Despite the help from Monika, the rest of the day was a downward spiral, a descent into the bowels of moving hell, if you will. For starters, where my brother would move, say, a book or a fork, I’d move ten boxes of heavy stuff. Monika and I had a Herculean struggle with the largest of Jim’s three televisions – the one with the huge cathode ray tube and sharp plastic edges that gouged your skin. (In fact, I think the manufacturers of television set in the late eighties drew some mysterious correlation between weight, awkwardness, and lack of any handles or means by which to move the thing and quality and price.) By the time she and I managed to lug it up the three flights of stairs – yes, my brother took the third floor bedroom – my sweaty clothes and skin was covered in that grayish grimy dust and dirt that clings to television sets because, let’s face it, once the TV’s in its little nook or shelf, the only time it ever really gets cleaned up is the next time it’s moved.
From there it was back to boxes and more boxes – my favorite of which is the garment box with the mirror box a close second. I preferred the garment box only because while lifting it, its awkward size and girth conjured sensations of my next hernia far more often than I’d have liked. But the mirror boxes offered something akin to the toy surprise in a Crackerjack box: would it be light, heavy, fragile; would the contents slide out on your foot as you lifted the box? Then there were the boxes fill with pretty much anything from staplers to kitchen knives to weight sets – these boxes (mostly my brother’s) tested a potpourri of one’s talents ranging from balance and weight distribution to sheer courage.
Finally, forearms burning like Popeye the Sailor Man, every other muscle strained or pulled, cuts and bruises scattered on our persons like a shot gun blast, we unloaded the last box around midnight, just in time for my brother and I to drive the exhaust hour or so in the U-Haul, to Springfield, VA. When we eventually arrived at our new “home”, the celebratory plans – a chilled bottle of champagne that Monika had brought – quietly and quickly faded. Tired and dirty, a sudden realization hit us: neither of us had the foresight to set up our beds beforehand and there were too many boxes, lamps, paintings and other crap on the two couches we had. So I slept on my brother’s rolled up Oriental rug, and he slept on a box of clothes. Needless to say, neither of us was a ray of sunshine the next morning.
I cannot think of a worse job than that of the professional mover because every day would be a living hell. Jailed junkies and inmates on death row have it better than the men and women who have voluntarily entered into the moving vocation. (To be honest, I think it’s fair to say no one actually wants to be in the moving business, you simply end up there as I imagine proctologists and tax attorneys do.) These are, obviously, not the brightest of individuals but generally come in shapes and sizes: very large or small and wiry. The large ones tend to be, well, very large and not in anything resembling an athletic physique, though there are exceptions. A fellow by the name of Dennis helped me move once. He looked like an offensive tackle; he wanted to be in organized crime. (Again, I think that falls in the “end up in” bucket.)
Of the small and wiry types I have been of a 50 year old Italian man who instructed his colleagues to strap a player piano on his back while he walked up a long flight of stairs in San Francisco; if there is a Hall of Fame for moving employees, my vote goes to this legendary performance. Of the latter type, the one who was my personal favorite was a man we called “Snoop” because he purposefully resembled Snoop Dog, the rapper. Snoop was the brains of the outfit: he enjoyed the logistical aspect of a move, orchestrating his crew like a general in the field of battle. In fact, I recommended Snoop to my brother when he and his wife moved. (If you’re keeping score, we both moved from the house we’d bought together.)
My brother’s move contained a tactical test: after several attempts, some testing the limits of geometry and physics as we know them, the master bed would not fit up the narrow, right-angled staircase. Undaunted, Snoop managed to figure out a way to hoist the bed through a second story window. The gerryrigged contraption resembled a pulley system though not as sophisticated, and whether it was Snoop’s ingenuity or Moose’s sheer brawn I was amazed that they managed to get it through, the damage to the window, the walls, the gutter, and window sill notwithstanding.
In hindsight, witnessing my brother’s move it occurred to me that only the very throes of the move, the not-quite-half-way-there-and-this-is-going-to-be-just-awful sense of it, does one make the pledge: I will never do this again. (For the record, I did materially participate but only move an empty box, a feather duster, and a Dixie cup; I awoke that very morning with a devastating crick in my neck.)
And so, for posterity, I have come up with a list of considerations to contemplate before your next move:
- “Lift with your legs.” Not that this matters but, like stretching, it should jog a memory or two of your last attempt at something painful.
- Stuff breaks. No matter how tightly, carefully, or faithfully you wrap or pack something, there is a 50/50 chance it will break. (Besides, when was the last time you actually used great aunt Sophie’s Wedgewood soup tureen?)
- Prepare…as best you can. While I know of no proven preparatory activities other than, perhaps, flailing you body hapless against the doorjamb or at a banister corner, you should prepare for the move. Mentally, that is. Rent a copy of “The Exorcist”.
- Allow adequate recovery time. If you move yourself (or foolishly participate materially therein) allow yourself three or four days to recover. You will need each precious second.
- Get dirty. Not in a prurient sense, mind you, but dress in clothing that you do not have a sentimental attachment to. Rather than attempt to clean your clothes afterwards, I recommend burning them – this will purge all memories of the living hell you went through.
- Set up your bed first. Inhaling dust bunnies from your old apartment while sleeping on a dirty, rolled up rug is no fun – I speak from experience.
- Unpack quickly. This will help assure that you don’t inadvertently throw something out, like silverware or insurance documents, or, worse, that you simply store the box in the basement until the next time you move. (Oh so that’s where my collection of baseball cards have been.)
- Throw it out. You didn’t use it at your old place, do you really think you’re going to use it here?
- “Pay any amount to have your stuff moved for you because it is worth every penny” – these are words to live by. Heeding this advice will go well towards saving you additional psychiatric and/or medical costs tangentially associated with your idiocy.
- Don’t move. Do you really have to? Is your job so bad that you had to take the position in Memphis, TN, during August? So what if you can’t afford your sub-prime mortgage – look what the government did for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Foreclosures are no fun for anyone, especially banks, so stay where you are. Better yet, have them move you!
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