Everyone's moving. You, me, everybody... well, maybe not you. I ended up in a loft apartment, which has been a dream of mine ever since I started dreaming of having a loft apartment.
I've moved once a year since I was eighteen, and I think I've reached some sort of integral limit. I'm not sure what will happen to me if I pack-up again any time soon, but I don't think it'll be covered under Mover's Insurance.
My good friend also moved. He bought a house. When he told me he was going to close the deal, I was happy for him and congratulated him profusely until he asked me to lend a hand fixing it up. Then I suggested that he was far too young to own a home, and besides, wasn't it a serious financial burden?
I asked myself: How bad could it be? Just some minor cosmetic repairs.
How bad could it be? He just wants to replace some lights; I've wired skyscrapers.
How bad could it be...? I was never in Vietnam. But had I been, I would've instantly identified what happened next as one of those notorious "Flashbacks."
New Jersey: 2003. Living in a huge Victorian house with about four-thousand room-mates and their assorted boyfriends, girlfriends, and platonic friends. Privacy was at a minimum and in the words of Roosevelt you had to do what you could, with what you had, where you were. Noble aspirations until you realize that everyone was applying that philosophy toward the end goal of getting laid. The bathroom was one of the few places of guaranteed solitude, and someone was sharing that solitude with his girlfriend when they happened to slip and he put his hand through the shower wall.
This was a dire situation. It took us down to one working shower for a population that rivaled some Singapore slums. All we had to do was pull down the broken tiles until we got to solid wall, re-sheetrock, and re-tile. Maybe three hours worth of work, tops.
We start removing tiles, searching for solid wall. That wall might as well have been made of Tater-Tots for all its structural stability. And not premium Tater-Tots: This was an Inner-city-elementary-school-caffeteria Tater-Tot Wall. And like so many of its inedible brethren it ended up in a pile on the floor... and so did the wall other... and the other... When we ran out of walls we removed the ceiling. The framework holding up the walls was also rotting... which meant it had to come out... which meant we had to remove the tub.
It's a massive cast-iron tub. It must weigh 300 pounds. "How do we get this out?"
(It turns out a cast iron tub will shatter when hit with a 20 pound sledge-hammer.)
"Don't do that again; we don't need to sweep up 300 pounds of tub. Isn't there a better way?"
"What about a gasoline-powered demolition saw?"
"Oh, of course. Why woluldn't I have thought of that...?"
You've probably seen city maintenance workers using these saws to chop up sidewalks. I say that because we borrowed it from the city maintenance shed where it had been used primarily to chop up the sidewalks. Showing far more enthusiasm than common-sense, we walked into a bathroom the size of a broom-closet and promptly introduced the 19th century tub to an enginge-driven diamond-coated saw blade spinning at 9,200 RMPs.
Having successfully cut a bathtub in half, I crossed that off my list of Life Goals, and we set about trying to remove the pieces. I squatted down, grabbed some iron, and started lifting, only to find myself suddenly up to my waist in floor. Instead of lifting the bathtub up, I had simply moved my body down... through the floor and into the space above the kitchen.
"After we get the tub out, we're tossing the sink, and the toilet, so we can also get rid of this screwed up floor. Help me out of here."
"Hang on, I'm gonna get the saw...."
Yet, as we balanced across naked wood beams to heave a 5-gallon-per-flush toilet out of a third-story window, I couldn't help but reflect on the growing mountain of debris now lying in the driveway, and note that all this started as a simple quest to replace a couple of tiles...
So, how bad could it be? I knew full well. And my suspicions were well confirmed by the 13th or 14th hour I'd spent in my friend's new house, pulling out and repairing wiring; gamely trying to explain why it wasn't okay to wire a dishwasher with the same type of cord you'd use for an alarm-clock. Yes, I know it's neat that your dimmer-switch dims all those lights, but it also dims your television, stereo and mini-fridge....
"Don't touch that; stand back; trust me, I know what I'm doing." I think I must've broken a record for the number of times someone can say those without a trip to the ER.
Moving? I don't need to move anymore. When other people move, it's almost more than I can handle.
I've moved once a year since I was eighteen, and I think I've reached some sort of integral limit. I'm not sure what will happen to me if I pack-up again any time soon, but I don't think it'll be covered under Mover's Insurance.
My good friend also moved. He bought a house. When he told me he was going to close the deal, I was happy for him and congratulated him profusely until he asked me to lend a hand fixing it up. Then I suggested that he was far too young to own a home, and besides, wasn't it a serious financial burden?
I asked myself: How bad could it be? Just some minor cosmetic repairs.
How bad could it be? He just wants to replace some lights; I've wired skyscrapers.
How bad could it be...? I was never in Vietnam. But had I been, I would've instantly identified what happened next as one of those notorious "Flashbacks."
New Jersey: 2003. Living in a huge Victorian house with about four-thousand room-mates and their assorted boyfriends, girlfriends, and platonic friends. Privacy was at a minimum and in the words of Roosevelt you had to do what you could, with what you had, where you were. Noble aspirations until you realize that everyone was applying that philosophy toward the end goal of getting laid. The bathroom was one of the few places of guaranteed solitude, and someone was sharing that solitude with his girlfriend when they happened to slip and he put his hand through the shower wall.
This was a dire situation. It took us down to one working shower for a population that rivaled some Singapore slums. All we had to do was pull down the broken tiles until we got to solid wall, re-sheetrock, and re-tile. Maybe three hours worth of work, tops.
We start removing tiles, searching for solid wall. That wall might as well have been made of Tater-Tots for all its structural stability. And not premium Tater-Tots: This was an Inner-city-elementary-school-caffeteria Tater-Tot Wall. And like so many of its inedible brethren it ended up in a pile on the floor... and so did the wall other... and the other... When we ran out of walls we removed the ceiling. The framework holding up the walls was also rotting... which meant it had to come out... which meant we had to remove the tub.
It's a massive cast-iron tub. It must weigh 300 pounds. "How do we get this out?"
(It turns out a cast iron tub will shatter when hit with a 20 pound sledge-hammer.)
"Don't do that again; we don't need to sweep up 300 pounds of tub. Isn't there a better way?"
"What about a gasoline-powered demolition saw?"
"Oh, of course. Why woluldn't I have thought of that...?"
You've probably seen city maintenance workers using these saws to chop up sidewalks. I say that because we borrowed it from the city maintenance shed where it had been used primarily to chop up the sidewalks. Showing far more enthusiasm than common-sense, we walked into a bathroom the size of a broom-closet and promptly introduced the 19th century tub to an enginge-driven diamond-coated saw blade spinning at 9,200 RMPs.
Having successfully cut a bathtub in half, I crossed that off my list of Life Goals, and we set about trying to remove the pieces. I squatted down, grabbed some iron, and started lifting, only to find myself suddenly up to my waist in floor. Instead of lifting the bathtub up, I had simply moved my body down... through the floor and into the space above the kitchen.
"After we get the tub out, we're tossing the sink, and the toilet, so we can also get rid of this screwed up floor. Help me out of here."
"Hang on, I'm gonna get the saw...."
Yet, as we balanced across naked wood beams to heave a 5-gallon-per-flush toilet out of a third-story window, I couldn't help but reflect on the growing mountain of debris now lying in the driveway, and note that all this started as a simple quest to replace a couple of tiles...
So, how bad could it be? I knew full well. And my suspicions were well confirmed by the 13th or 14th hour I'd spent in my friend's new house, pulling out and repairing wiring; gamely trying to explain why it wasn't okay to wire a dishwasher with the same type of cord you'd use for an alarm-clock. Yes, I know it's neat that your dimmer-switch dims all those lights, but it also dims your television, stereo and mini-fridge....
"Don't touch that; stand back; trust me, I know what I'm doing." I think I must've broken a record for the number of times someone can say those without a trip to the ER.
Moving? I don't need to move anymore. When other people move, it's almost more than I can handle.