10/20

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
              -Jesus, proprietor, Twelve Nice Guys Moving Co.

You won’t hear me complain about living in my house again. Not for a long, long time.

This is not because I enjoy the house. It’s not because I harbor some deep love for suburbia, and it is certainly not because I like the commute to work. It’s not because I love the way my mom calls out to me every five minutes because she can’t get her computer’s screen saver to work. It’s not because I like going to the bathroom, only to glance over in the middle of my dirty business and see that someone has opened the blinds for the millionth time.

(I’m sorry, but why would you EVER open the blinds in the bathroom? Is there ever, EVER a time when you’re doing something in the bathroom that it would be okay for people to see? Does my mom have a pressing, urgent need to show our neighbors that we wash our hands? Am I the lunatic?)

The real reason that I will not be moving out any time before retirement is that, this weekend, I remembered what moving is like.

My girlfriend is a lovely lass. A wonderful, heaven-sent creature. She’s the greatest thing in my life, and I would do absolutely anything for her. I would wrestle an alligator for her any day of the week. And the little shrew knows it. That’s why I spent the entirety of my weekend, every waking moment, hauling boxes full of her knick knacks across Midtown St. Louis into a new apartment.

There is nothing on earth that can adequately capture the experience of helping another person move. Once the person asks for your help and you run out of alibis, the initial prey-caught-in-a-bear-trap feeling gets replaced by a kind of tranquil resignation, not unlike the feeling described by people who’ve survived drowning. You enter an alternate universe; one of your good friends has suddenly become your jailer, your whip-holding taskmaster. Before long, you find yourself being ordered to grab and carry and toss things that the other person would not normally allow you to touch.

It is during these Moments of the Move when real truth shows itself to you. Moving turns everyone into a philosopher monk. The extreme circumstances teach you things about yourself. They teach you things about others. At some point during the move, everyone involved says or thinks, “When I get home, I’m giving away everything I own, just so I never have to do this again.” Jesus wasn’t a carpenter; he was a mover.

This weekend was a good example; there were revelations left and right. The first thing I learned is that my girlfriend is, in fact, three people. At least, that’s the only logical conclusion I could draw. No one person has that much stuff. No one person could ever afford it all. Only a team of women, working at least two full-time jobs, could ever accumulate so many shoes. It would also explain the mood swings.

It’s never taken me two whole days to do anything. It takes me less time to grow a beard then it took to move those damn boxes. The laws of physics as we understand them do not account for a room this densely packed. By Sunday night, I had begun working on an extensive (if slightly leaky) theory demonstrating that my girlfriend’s old room is, in fact, a black hole. I never would have never been capable of such an understanding of quantum physics if we hadn’t been moving.

I learned a little about myself, too. Most of what I learned centered around the fact that I have the body of an elderly woman. As much as I’d like to believe otherwise, not all of those boxes could have been filled with cannonballs. I know for a fact that one of them was filled with paper. I also know for a fact that I haven’t been able to twitch in three days without screaming in agony. If you could get rigor mortis while you were still alive, it would feel like this. That’s how I know I’m not going to get myself an apartment for a long, long time. My arms would snap off, sending brittle Jim shrapnel cascading to the floor. And nobody wants that.

There was a moment that first night, when we were making our last trip of the day to the apartment, when I realized, “We have to do all of this again tomorrow.” It was then that I realized two truths. First, I saw that movers were either godlike or inhuman to face the prospect of carrying other people’s cannonballs every day of their lives. I vowed to hug a mover one day. Second, I realized that I truly loved my girlfriend when, faced with the prospect of hauling her crap for another day, I did not push her down the stairs and run. I was on the verge of a deeply spiritual experience, but I took a Tylenol and sat down for a minute and it went away.

Sunday was Heavy Furniture Day, and another day of deep learning. It also presented us with a special challenge. I called this challenge Operation: Life Support. My girlfriend’s dad decided he would be in charge of Heavy Furniture Day, despite the fact that he had a (second) severe heart attack about two months ago. It was risky; it was stupid; but dammit, it was his girl’s big move and he wanted to be there on her special day!

Of course, his being there had nothing to do with helping her at all and everything to do with proving he was still a big burly Man. As a result, it turned from an “our-little-girl’s-all-grown-up” moving day into an “oh-my-god-he’s-not-even-supposed-to-climb-stairs-and-he-has-a-two-ton-futon-on- his-back” moving day. I deeply resented the whole thing but, in the end, I didn’t push him down the stairs either. For a change, I said nothing.

I was just tempted-- seriously tempted, mind you-- to end that last paragraph with a pun about “a deeply moving experience.” In the interest of my credibility, I think I’ll just stop writing for the night.