The Longest Day
Quite a few people I know have moved recently, and I’ve heard my share of horror stories. I added one more to my collection last Friday when Anne and I helped her sister move out of a high-rise in Hoboken to a larger place about an hour away.
When we arrived a little after 8:00 AM, we were greeted by the disturbing news that their truck reservation fell through. The scoundrels had the reservation, they just couldn’t produce the truck. Not only that, but the building management had lost their reservation for Bogarting the elevator and truck parking space. It was several hours before she and her husband could find a truck, and then we were hampered by having to use the passenger elevator to move everything downstairs. Management acknowledged the snafu and were very cooperative at least in letting us build box mountains in the lobby and park in the “no parking” zone.
At least everything was well-packed and ready to go. They had collected discarded boxes rescued from recycling bins all over the building. It was quite an eclectic assortment. This made for some surprises as we discovered interesting boxes:
“When did you get this cool gelato machine?”
“Oh, I see. Right... it’s just the box.”
We finally finished around 8:30 and headed home. Carol and John swore they would never move themselves again. Good idea. When we moved two years ago, we never considered doing it ourselves. More to the point, our move went perfectly, although it’s not entirely because we used professionals. We were just very lucky.
No matter how you do it, moving is stressful. While waiting for the elevator, we wondered just how high moving ranked on the list of stressful activities. At that moment, we were all thinking that moving must be Number One, but then I remembered reading somewhere that public speaking is actually in first place. That made us wonder where Death fits in. Hmm. That should be pretty stressful—with the possible exception of Death by Chocolate. It’s apparently less stressful than public speaking, however... and moving too, probably. With this knowledge, the expression “I’d rather die” is starting to make sense.