Moving? I’m your guy

Sunday. Rainy Sunday. Nor’easter blew in a good punch to the face in the form of rain and wind, coupled with temperatures just below the shrug-it-off factor.

Of course I only had a borrowed sweatshirt. And of course someone needed my help moving that day. Yes, moving. Lifting all manner of heavy sh*t after one day of recoup following “Project Warrior” week.

“What’s the plan?” I asked, calling my boy in the hour before we would have started.

“Uh, moving,” he said. Drat. I guess I was committed. “But we’ll have to move it back a bit, I have to get the truck.”

0900 turned into 0930, which slipped to 1000 and then 1100. An additional kind-hearted bloke and I headed over to the brother in need. The rain continued. When I walked into his house, my heart broke.

He hadn’t packed yet. Well, sort of. There were some boxes in the corner. Some things had been removed from the shelves, but most of the crap of “regular apartment setup” remained in place.

So, instead of a quick move, I settled in to a long, arduous journey through the belongings of a man I’d just met two weeks before. After a couple of hours, the other gent who had come out to help had to run, leaving me, the brother in need, and his girlfriend. Between the three of us, we finished the packing in a couple of hours.

Lunch had come and gone. The truck had to be returned by 1700, meaning we had to beat feet. After half the truck was full, my outer garment was completely soaked. The water lay up against my skin, leeching out my remaining reservoir of enthusiasm. Still, we moved. Bike. Bed. Desk. TV—oh wait, not enough room. We’d have to drop this load off and come back.

Where were the keys to the truck? Oh sh*t. Where had he put them? Were they in the jacket? The kitchen? Oh crap. How many boxes would we have to unpack to find the keys?

At this point, I neared the precipice of insanity. I was wet. I was tired. I had work for class to do. Every ounce of surface response said kick the man in the shins and head home, due east, on the highway. I’d be wet, but I’d be that much closer to a warm shower and not picking sh*t up.

But, the calm, Zen Josh took a few minutes to breathe amidst the frantic key search. God showed up through the rain and damp boxes and lead my man’s hands to the right box, three into the sequence of undoing our morning’s work. There they were, the keys that would ignite our beast of burden and send us three blocks away for more undue physical effort.

You see, my brother in need lived in—lets say, a seedy part of town. The meth heads upstairs weren’t so bad, the Latinos next door had music going at all hours—again, not so bad. It was the random gunshots and being mugged outside his door that finally turned his stomach against the place.

So he found a high-rise place a few blocks down the street and a “world away” as he said.

Whoops, out of time. God bless!

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