Moving

I helped someone move from one apartment to another last Saturday night.

If you really, really care about someone, you'll help that person move. If you don't really, really, really care (I keep adding really's), you lack the one incentive that compels you to participate in the moving process. It's a wild process, one that I've done myself at least five times since I left college.

I have to admire people that take jobs as movers. It's a tough job that doesn't yield many rewards, like sewer cleaner, dog catcher, Home Depot stocker (more on him later), prison warden, and haystack-needle-finder. That's why you need to really, really, really, really care about the person you help with moving. It's a grind-it-out, sacrificial, sweaty bonding experience. But it's not without some interesting anecdotes.

The preparatory trip to Home Depot can be an adventure. The second trip to Home Depot to get what you didn't think of during your first trip is must-see TV. You see, during your first trip, you are trying to find a few general things. During the second trip, you are trying to find things very situationally-specific, like a certain sized screwdriver or wrench.

And the stockers know it, because they know you don't have tools of your own, and you're probably trying to figure this all out on the fly, and you're there a second time because you tried to use what you bought after the first trip and found out that it didn't work and got frustrated and threw what you had bought across the room and nearly put out the eye of the person you're helping move.

And so you hunt blindly for the right items, trying to avoid eye contact with any of the Home Depot employees who know your plight because they've seen many poor saps before you in the same situation. And they smile and shake their heads at this rare source of amusement at their jobs... one of the few, albeit twisted, rewards of working at Home Depot.

Anyway, you also need to find lots of empty boxes. And as you wander up and down the aisles of Home Depot with this person that you really really really really really care about, looking for a big sign that says, "Boxes", you try to avoid those Home Depot stockers. Again, it's a Saturday night, and they're working at Home Depot. They can't be happy; thus, you are sure they are prone to sarcasm. As in, if you ask one of them, "Where can I find boxes?", he is sure to respond with something like, "EVERYWHERE!!!"

Because, when you work at Home Depot, you see wall-to-wall boxes. I'm sure you get sick of them. This may be why you don't find any huge signs hanging from the ceiling reading, "Boxes" to indicate where the empty moving boxes are. It would be too depressing for Home Depot's employees.

And, of course, we stand in front of a huge pile of flattened, empty boxes, trying to project how many it will take to contain all of the stuff that belongs to this wonderful person that you really really really really really really really care about. You both fall deep into thought, trying to analyze from memory all of the different things that need to be boxed up. And you both stare off into space, thinking...

Remember the analogy of the hamster running in the wheel as a metaphor for someone thinking? Using the hamster, this is how that particular thought process goes: hamster wakes up, hamster realizes he is hung over, hamster slams into the wall of the cage; hamster sees a wheel in the cage but doesn't know what to do with the wheel; hamster looks at the wheel, sniffs the wheel, touches the wheel, chews on the wheel for a little bit, spits out a piece of the wheel that broke off; hamster climbs into the wheel, starts walking, then running; hamster realizes that this is great exercise; hamster realize that hamster is going nowhere very fast; hamster no longer is interested in exercise; hamster accuses owner of a sadistic set-up.

Eventually, you get back to the apartment and start the packing and heavy lifting. You start to load a van, and all of a sudden, that delicate balance between creativity and safety starts to come into play. Do you want metal rods hanging out an open window? Do you strap the headboard of the bed to the roof? Does the driver really need to see out the rear view mirror? Heck, do you really need to see out the windshield?

Fitting everything into every crevice of the van becomes a real-time exercise in high school geometry. With every box being stacked one on top of the other, you further butcher the Pythagorean Theorem.

And, some please explain why we do to the following: say you forgot the tape measure. Why do we think it is accurate and effective to measure the width of, say, a dresser by spreading your arms and gauging its length from fingertip-to-fingertip, then try to hold that measured pose and hold it up to an empty space? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, your arm moved? Because, if you miss it by a hair, you just lifted a dresser into a tight space within the van (threatening the well-being of your lower back) in vain.

Oh, yeah, one more story about the dresser. 1pm rolls around, and we have to get up one flight of maybe twenty steps. The dresser is too heavy to carry, and the stairs are too steep for two people to get it up without someone getting hurt. Intense desire to finish the job collide with dangerously reckless creativity, and I decide ('scuse me, you decide) to roll the dresser up the stairs. Yes, you (and the dresser) almost fall backwards about five times into the arms of the person you really really really really really really really really care about. But, by the grace of God, you make it, dinging up the walls all the way up. And everything is left in the living room, unpacked, but the job is done.

And for about an hour, you lay in the middle of the floor of the living room on top of a cushion, unable to get up. And you recap the night and laugh because you're done and groan because you're as sore as an ex-quarterback.

And you did it because you really really really really really really really really really care about someone.