A Moving Story

Before this year I hadn’t moved into an apartment on Sept. 1, but I can now say that Labor Day is the most aptly named holiday on the calendar, at least until Columbus Day is renamed Blatant Excuse to Take a Day Off Day.

In a case of less-than-ideal timing, I had to go to New York for a bachelor party two days before Moving Day. So when I returned on the 31st, I sported a hangover that rendered my efforts to prepare for the move quite fruitless. Every time I looked at all the crap that I had to pack up, my headache mushroomed and I began pondering extreme measures, like arson or hiring movers.

On the appointed day, my parents and brother arrived to help with the move. My mother no doubt expected to see the apartment neatly stacked with boxes and the furniture covered with bubble wrap, but instead found Scott and me frantically sweeping entire shelves of belongings wholesale into whatever containers we could find, including trash bags and empty 12-pack boxes. “Oh my God,” she declared.

Personality clashes surfaced almost immediately. In fact, the first dispute involved bubble wrap, which my mom loves. Mom brought enough bubble wrap to safely transport a brontosaurus skeleton, and damned if she wasn’t going to use it. “Let’s bubble-wrap the TV,” she commanded. “Let’s just plan on not banging the TV into any walls on the way out,” I countered. Given the state of disaster in our apartment and the fact that the new people were waiting for us to leave before they could move in, I didn’t see much time for frivolous pursuits like protecting fragile items from destruction.

The bubble-wrap debate was soon eclipsed by larger issues, such as how to get our enormous sectional couch down the stairs. The fact that the couch was in the apartment was evidence that it could be done, but my brother and I soon discovered that maneuvering the couch down the stairwell required a keen spatial awareness because it would only fit around the newel posts in a particular way. Rotating a heavy couch around obstacles while descending stairs is never easy, and it’s even harder when one of the obstacles is your mother, who has jammed herself between the couch and the wall to dictate the proper couch-spinning technique.

The situation became extremely heated on the second landing when the couch got lodged between the wall and newel post. It seemed no amount of jiggering would free it, but once again Mom took charge to overcome the impasse.

“Go get your saw,” she said. “We’ll saw off the top of the post.”

“We’re not sawing off the post,” I said, thinking of my cherished security deposit. “The couch came up these stairs just the way they are, so it’ll go back down.”

“No it won’t. It’s stuck. We’ve got to saw off the post.” Answering the next obvious question, she added, “We can glue the top back on after the couch is out.”

I successfully vetoed any amateur carpentry, and eventually we birthed the couch from the stairwell and loaded it into the truck, where my father stood guard against the ever-diligent Boston Police. Earlier a scowling cop had attempted to have my car towed, a process I thwarted by getting in and driving away.

The couch continued to antagonize me. While we were carrying it down to my new “garden level” (or “in the basement with the machinery”) apartment, momentum pushed me slightly past the door and into a piece of flypaper loaded with insect carcasses. As a welcome to the neighborhood, I would’ve preferred a fruitcake.

My new neighbor John, who lives across the hall, came out and removed the flypaper from its hook and me. I’ve since learned that John is quite, shall we say, particular about insects. He doesn’t like them. He also doesn’t like when people leave the hallway door open and let them in, even if it’s only for a minute while those people carry in groceries. As an indication of John’s commitment to insecticide, his piece of flypaper is hung outside the building’s door. I’m sure it’s making a significant dent in the Massachusetts mosquito population.

I don’t have space to describe the moving process in full, but suffice it to say that it was an odd mix of tedium, physical distress and unpleasant tasks—sort of like high school. At least my old foe the change thief doesn’t know where I live. Yet. ∂