When all else fails, blame the movers

The Family Guy
By Brett Buckner

There simply is no middle ground in these trying times. When the closest thing you have to a "dress shirt" is black and plastered with the face of serial killer, either you're in the midst of moving and all other clean clothes have been hijacked or you're still living in your parents' basement with little hope of escape to the world of grown-ups.

When the closest thing you've got to a flathead screwdriver is a clean spoon and dirty fingers, either you're the world's worst handyman or in the midst of moving and all other tools have been swallowed up by any one of an infinite number of boxes.

OK, given my talent and abysmal track record for successful 'round-the-house chores, this second scenario could go either way. Fortunately for all those involved, moving is the correct answer.

Though we've been staring down the barrel of this day since mid-March, My Lovely Wife and I still weren't fully prepared. Like kids procrastinating taking out the trash until it stinks to high heaven, we pretended everything was well, yet silently knew we weren't even close to being prepared.

Then it arrived. A semi-truck so big it blocked out the sun, navigated its way into our narrow drive. After a few polite introductions and hurried handshakes, our house began to disappear one over-packed box at a time.

It was a race, really. In an effort to save money, My Lovely Wife and I boxed everything ourselves. Brilliant. It was a flawless plan for books, lamps, CDs, pictures, dishes, glasses and my collection of authentic shrunken heads from Borneo. But in the final stages, when the process should be getting easier, the true panic set in.

Surrounded by more boxes than an IKEA warehouse, it appeared to the passive observer that our end was almost complete. Thus we entered what I like to refer to as the "Oh, Crap" phase. (In truth, my language was a tad more colorful.) But with a 15-month-old creeper skulking around who has a tendency to repeat one-syllable words -- though translated in baby gibberish -- such cursing is frowned upon.

And let's face, there's something cute about a baby scooting around shouting "CWAP ... CWAP ... CWAP" and giggling.

The evidence that we had officially entered this most hazardous phase was scattered across every room, hidden in every closet and lurking in every drawer. But to avoid any extra fees by forcing the movers into packing something for us, My Lovely Wife and I leapt into survival mode.

No matter what it was -- fragile family heirloom or spatula -- it was dumped in a box. No packaging paper, no soft placement, no worries about heavy stuff on top of light, we ran from room to room as if in some out-of-water game of Marco Polo, throwing it all together.

With sweat on our brows and our hearts pounding in our ears, we got the job done -- always one step ahead of the movers. But in our fury, we simply forgot that we might actually need some of that stuff. Hence the spoon-for-screwdriver substitute.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but moving and overzealous packing creates some seriously silly offspring.

And yet for all the rushing around, panic and general madness, by the next morning, when it was all over and the house was empty, there was this strange sense of sadness.

It didn't last long, but it was there: that aftertaste of regret, like from eating a bad piece of bologna. And then we were gone. While the semi-truck filled with all our stuff sat parked in some warehouse, My Lovely Wife and I sat at the polished conference table of an attorney (me in the serial killer T-shirt thanks to the movers packing up all our clean clothes) in Columbus, Ga. quietly signing our lives away for a new home.

Never in my life have I nodded so often out of total ignorance. It's exhausting to laugh in all the right places. After about the 300th signature, I vaguely remember conceding to lop off of finger, starting with the right pinky, for each late mortgage payment.

But at least the move is over. That's the scary part.

Brett Buckner started writing friend's term papers back in junior high and hasn't stopped sense. He was the features writer for the Anniston Star for five years but after his wife took a better job in Columbus, Ga. has opted for the life of a freelance writer. When not chasing around his toddler or punishing his 12-year old daughter, Brett enjoys obsessing over his garden ... Yep, he's a gardener.