Dave Barry's Homes and Other Black Holes (5 page)

1. The money has to BE THERE on the first of the month, rain or shine.
   

2. If the money is not THERE, the BANK is going to get VERY ANGRY.
   

3. The BANK is going to want to GET EVEN.
   

4. The BANK is going to make SOMEBODY wish he was naked and tied down spread-eagle on an anthill with ants eating his EYEBALLS because that would be a lot more pleasant than what the BANK has in mind IF THE MONEY IS NOT THERE.
   

5. Specifically, the BANK is going to get a pair of NUMBER SIX KNITTING NEEDLES and heat them up to 11,000 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT, and then the BANK is going to …
   

And so it continues, in technical legalistic detail. It’s really nothing to concern yourself
about. The important thing is: at last you’re a homeowner. Now you can immerse yourself in the many rewarding and traditional activities that new homeowners engage in, such as trying to figure out how to make the mortgage payment and, simultaneously, not starve to death.

This easy-to-prepare meal is not only economical, but also extremely popular with children, who find it gives them that “extra energy” boost they sometimes need to stay awake for six days in a row.

If you go to any major hotel or country club on a weekend, chances are you’ll find a large formal wedding reception going on, featuring
serving people walking around and actually
giving away
teeny little sandwiches with the crust cut off. This is an excellent source of food for you, the new homeowner. You just walk in there, looking like you are a close personal friend of either the bride or the groom, and help yourself to as many trays as you feel you will need during this particular mortgage payment period. To keep people from getting suspicious, you should stop from time to time and remark aloud, in a natural tone of voice: “I am a close personal friend of the bride! Or the groom!”

This technique also works at funeral receptions (“I am very sorry that the deceased is dead!”).

But enough about food. Because before we can worry about paying for our house, we have to move into it and start finding out what’s wrong with it. My guess is, plenty.

I, personally, have never given birth to a child, but I have seen it dramatized a number of times on television, and I would say that in terms of pain, childbirth does not hold a candle to moving. For one thing, childbirth has a definite end to it. The baby comes out, looking like a vaseline-smeared ferret, and the parents get to beam at it joyfully,
and that is that. Whereas the average move goes on forever. You take Couple A, who just had a baby, and Couple B, who just moved their household, and if you keep track of them, you’ll find that years from now, when Couple A’s baby has grown up, left home, and started a family, Couple B will still be rooting through boxes full of
wadded-up newspaper, looking for the lid to their Mr. Coffee. Also, during childbirth, when things go wrong, trained professionals give you powerful drugs. Nobody is ever this thoughtful during a move.

This is why my Number One piece of helpful advice to people who are about to move, especially for the first time, is always:

DON’T DO IT! SET FIRE TO YOUR HOUSEHOLD GOODS RIGHT NOW AND JUST WALK AWAY FROM THEM WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A BACKWARD GLANCE! THIS WILL BE EASIER, IN THE LONG RUN!

Of course you think I’m just kidding, and by the time you realize I’m not, you’ll already be in your new home, trying unsuccessfully to locate something to slash your wrists with. So we might as well get started.

First off, you need to make an important decision: Are you going to move yourself with the help of friends who have been drinking too much beer, or are you going to hire surly, incompetent professionals? The answer most likely depends on whether or not you, personally, have to pay for it. Many times, large corporations will pay for moving
expenses, so you might ask them, although usually their policy is to do this only for their own employees.

The big advantage of going with professional movers, of course, is that you have somebody to complain to when you get to your new home and discover that your fine china has been reduced to Chiclet-size pieces and there is mayonnaise in the piano. Also, if it’s a full-service move, you get to watch the Packing People in action. These are moving company workers who go through your house scooping up everything they see and putting it into a box. Everything. The Packing People do not ask questions. They will cheerfully pack an entire box with used Kitty Litter, painstakingly wrapping each individual cat doot in specialized paper so it will not be damaged in shipment. Thus it is very important to keep a sharp eye on the Packing People while they are at work, so as
to avoid painful tragedies. (“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH JENNIFER?”)

Another problem that sometimes arises with professional movers is getting them to give you your furniture back once they put it
in the van. This problem is especially serious if the driver, after he puts your stuff in his van, goes around and picks up several other households full of stuff, which he then has to drop off, usually in Zaire, before he can go to your new home. The solution to this problem is to do what savvy moving families have been doing for years:
hijack the truck
. Get a gun, and simply demand that the driver unload at your house first. Of course this means you’ll wind up with somebody else’s possessions, but it doesn’t really matter. You’ll never get them unpacked anyway.

The big advantage of moving yourself is that you get to rent a rental truck. Rental trucks are highly specialized vehicles that are not released for use by the general public until they have undergone an intensive “breaking-in” program of being used to carry violent cattle with severe intestinal disorders over rough
terrain for a minimum of 1,700,000 miles without maintenance.

These machines are capable of traveling the length of several football fields on a single tankful of gas, yet they boast the kind of cornering, braking, and acceleration characteristics normally associated with municipal
stadiums. No question about it: Once you get behind the wheel of a rental truck, you’ll wonder what the sticky substance on the seat is. But before you’re ready to think about the truck, you need to go through all your possessions and make a serious futile effort to get rid of them. A key element in this effort is …

A garage sale is basically when strangers come to your house and examine your personal belongings with undisguised contempt.

The first ones you’ll meet will be the garage sale Regulars. Garage sales are their lives. They’ll show up at your home early, generally about two days before the sale is scheduled to begin. The way they find out about it is, they use computers to examine satellite reconnaissance photographs of suburban neighborhoods for signs of incipient garage sale activity, such as people standing around arguing about how much to charge for a 1953 set of the
Encyclopedia
Britannica
that’s missing volume 18 (Saliva-Tapeworm).

How do you price all those treasured personal belongings? The truth is, it doesn’t matter what you charge, because the Regulars aren’t going to pay it. These are people who do not own a single possession, including furniture, that they paid more than $2.50 for, and they are not about to change their policy for the likes of you.

The Regulars will quickly pick you clean of everything that anybody might want to buy, so when your sale actually gets under way, it will consist of people getting out of their cars, examining your possessions the way you might view an unexpected leech in your pasta, then asking you: “Is this it?” The only thing they’ll be interested in buying is anything on which you have carefully placed a large sign stating: NOT FOR SALE. They’ll walk up, read the sign carefully, then ask you: “Is this for sale?”

It can make you feel vaguely inadequate, watching people reject your possessions. At least that’s how it affects me. I find myself wanting to please these people. I want to say, “If you don’t see what you like, we’ll order it!” But of course this tends to defeat the
whole purpose of the garage sale, so the best thing to do is just sit there grimly until the sale is over and you can throw everything away.

Okay, now that we’ve cleared out some of the dead wood, it’s time to proceed with the next step in the moving process, which is …

You won’t start out this way, of course. You’ll start by selecting the objects with great care and wrapping them up very gently. You’ll keep this up for a week or so, packing box after box, making regular trips for more, getting to be good buddies with the clerks at the liquor store, getting a satisfied feeling when you gaze upon the big stacks of filled boxes in the living room. And then one day you’ll look around and make a chilling discovery:
You’re not making any progress
. There’s still just as much stuff lying around unboxed as there was the day you started.
There might even be
more
. And so you start to pack with less care, faster and faster, until you find yourself in an uncontrolled packing frenzy, throwing everything—dirt, money, deceased spiders—into liquor boxes in a desperate effort to empty the house.