My good friend, Wes Blalock, gave me a call recently. He told me that he and his family were leaving their current home and moving into a bigger place. During the past nineteen years that they had been in the current house they had accumulated quite a bit of stuff and he wanted to know if I would be available to drive down to San Jose and help him move.
There is an old adage that says: A friend will help you. A good friend will help you move.
Wes and I have known each other since we were kids, so when he asked if I could help I, of course, immediately told him, “I can’t. I’m busy that day.”
After Wes pointed out that he hadn’t told me what day he needed help, I realized I had inadvertently wasted the only excuse I had. With no other plausible reasons to say no, I agreed to participate. I really need to learn to be more patient and time my responses better. If I could simply learn to wait a few seconds before answering a question, I would have more friends and my back would hurt a great deal less.
When my wife got home from work, I told her that we had agreed to go to San Jose and help Wes and his family move into a new house. She put down her car keys, forced a smile, and asked when we were going.
“Next weekend,” I told her.
“Oh shoot. I’m busy next weekend. But you boys go ahead and have fun.”
Have I mentioned that my wife has much better timing than I do?
I don’t know exactly what my wife was “busy” doing during the weekend. Maybe she had plans to hand out clothing and food to the homeless. Perhaps she was volunteering her time at an orphanage. Or, it’s possible she was working her way through a couple bottles of wine in celebration of having the house to herself for a couple days. Regardless of her actual plans, the end result was that I had allowed myself to get sucked into helping someone move, and I would be doing it by myself.
When I got to San Jose, I received my first bit of good news. Wes told me that we were not going to be moving any furniture that weekend. He had hired a moving truck and a couple workers who would show up the following week and take all the furniture, appliances, and items too large to squeeze into a car. He said, “Today, we are going to be moving mostly dishes, books, and some potted plants.”
I figured I had lucked out, at least until he pointed me to the backyard where all the “potted plants” were arranged. There were about two dozen pots, each about the size of a garbage can, and a collection of flora that would be more correctly classified as trees rather than plants. Weighing in at about a hundred pounds apiece, they required two people and the assistance of an industrial-sized hand truck to get them into our vehicles.
As we relocated Wes’ portable forest into the backs of our pickup trucks, I made several suggestions regarding how to load them more efficiently into the vehicles so we could minimize the number of trips we needed to make to the new house. Wes then made a suggestion of his own that was decidedly less polite and may not even be physically possible. I took the hint and stopped talking.
Because I did not know the location of his new place, Wes had me follow him there. To get to the new house, we had to use the freeway. I must admit that this part of the move was by far my favorite part. At sixty-five miles per hour, the plants in the back of Wes’ truck reminded me of watching natural disaster shows on television. It was like observing a hurricane as it moved through a tiny tropical forest. The only thing missing was a troupe of monkeys fleeing for their lives.
Unfortunately, the show only lasted about fifteen minutes. Then we were back to the back-breaking chore of removing everything out of the truck and relocating it to its new home in the backyard. At least unloading the vehicles was a quicker process than loading them had been. Mostly, because by that point I had stopped caring whether or not I broke something.
When the trucks were empty, Wes felt there was still enough time in the day to go back to his house and move one more load. I told him that sounded like a great idea and I would meet him there. As soon as Wes’ truck was out of sight, I jumped onto the freeway and headed back for Sacramento. I will have to come up with some kind of an excuse for disappearing the next time I talk to him, but for now, I am just glad to be back home.
I know this makes me sound like a terrible friend, but I am at peace with that, because frankly, I am a terrible friend. And, Wes would be the first to tell you that.
Wes, if you are reading this, I just want you to know that I love you dearly. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, but from the bottom of my heart, I promise you that I am never going to do this again.
If you ever decide to move someplace else, don’t bother to ask. I’m going to be busy that day.
.
.
.
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