Award Tour Vol. 19: Once It's On the Ground

PART I: THE HOUSE

It’s Saturday and we’re on our way to a friend’s house to help move some old items (furniture, boxes, etc) from a house to a landfill. Sound straight forward and easy? Yes. Would I be writing about it if it were either? No.

The small, light items upstairs move quickly and easily... because they’re small and light. But in the basement, there’s a whole different gravitational pull. In the basement we’re asked to move this colossal, floor-carving, block that they call a “refrigerator” up a flight of stairs and out the house. I sense “struggle” in the near future.

Can we actually move this thing? No seriously… will Physics allow it? We heaved the metal box up on a dolly and I swear that the wheels started singing “Old Negro Spirituals” about oppression. They barely even turned under all that weight; and it almost felt like it was a conscious decision on their part to protest. When we finally got it to the stairway it was like the Iron Giant the Refrigerator gained 20 lbs with each step up. Struggle realized.

Once we finally reached the top, we had to lean the refrigerator (yes, while it was at the top of the stairs) to get the dolly from one side to the other. Guess who got the job of holding the fridge up while it was tilting? Yeah…

Anyway, I held it.

And held it.

And held it.



And as you might expect, after awhile Physics once again makes an appearance in the story line... particularly the branch of physics that deals with "friction". There is a massive Normal Force (don’t ask me to explain, just google it, N-O-R-M-A-L-F-O-R-C-E) being produced by the Death Star this refrigerator but at the angle it’s tilted, all the force was being applied to my shoulder…

… I shouldn’t have to explain why this is a problem.


Clank, clank….click

“Hurry up y’all”

See the size of the font here? That how’s you know I mean what I’m saying and I said it loud. I hear more activity on the other side of this Metallic Stonehenge Slab the refrigerator… but not more results. The gravity of the situation is apparently only something I can grasp (pun intentional)

Clank, clankety, clank…. Clank , clank

“Hey man!!! Hurry up”

Look how big that font is. The desperation is leaping off the screen like it’s in 3D IMAX. I know, that on the other side of this Titanium Rampart refrigerator they’re trying. But trying and doing are two different verbs. Ask any state that’s ever tried to get me to do jury duty.

Anyway, in a few more seconds the refrigerator will list back at an angle where only someone with a cape and some emblem on their chest will be able to hold it. And for the record, I’m not one of those people… my underoos from 1^st grade are long gone. If it slides back any further… there will be no escape. People will die.

Clank Clank… “okay we got it”.

I can’t remember if I said “Thank You Jesus” out loud or just in my head… I was beginning to black out and was getting ready for the opening credits of my "life flashing before me". The one thing I do remember? The sweet sensation of the tilting weight being lifted off of me and a sense that I had been given a second lease on life.

I look back and reflect on that promise I made to myself that day; just as the refrigerator was about to crush me. I promised myself that if I ever had a house with a refrigerator downstairs, it would also have a door through which it could be walked out. If such a door or passageway is not possible… it will be created... if that is not possible... it will still be created. I will ignore reality until it bends to my will. If it turns out that this approach still isn’t feasible … if no passage way can truly be created with “the power of my mind”, then that refrigerator will simply stay in that room downstairs…

…FOREVER.

PART II: THE LANDFILL

Items big and small, from the house are now loaded onto the U-Haul truck. We're halfway there. Just gotta dump them now. We get to the garbage dump mid day, and the line would have you thinking we were waiting to get into instead of a landfill. This is nonsense. The only thing worse than sitting in a U-Haul, on a hot day, in a long line… is sitting in a U-Haul, on a hot day, in a long line down wind of a land fill. Forty Five minutes waiting in line and we are only just now reaching the front entrance - at which point they weren't trying to let us in. Why?

Because we had a U-Haul trailer, instead of an open bed truck. Apparently they have some policy against U-Haul trailers (the reason escapes me, but they have it, and so it’s a problem).We badger and negotiate with the dude at the front gate, and just when it looks like he's about to relent he asks what's in the trailer. And well… you've been reading the story... A refrigerator is in there, so we tell him...


"clothes..."


The irony of course is that you were actually allowed to dump a Refrigerator at this site but there was one thing you weren’t allowed to dump… guess what it was? Yeah… clothes. If this was an after-school special this would be the part where some B-level celebrity comes out and says “Honesty is the Best Policy” – and then you nod your head in agreement… even though deep down inside you don’t really believe it, anyway…

We had to badger and negotiate in overdrive now… and our argument was a simple one, “we recant everything we just told you, and now assure you that we are carrying everything and only those things you just told us is permissible. Yeah It sounded like we said we had clothes. We may have even said the words... but really we don't... it was just a hypothetical. Can we go in now?”

I honestly think he relented and sent us through, despite insulting their intelligence because, ultimately the dude at the front gate figured he just wasn’t being paid enough an hour to actually be good at his job… score one for cynicism.

Now that we are past the gatekeepers (aka first layer of security), we have to deal with the second layer of security, whom I called Garbage Dump Sentinels. These are the same dudes who first cut their teeth in the profession of, “irrelevant security”, as hall monitors in your local high school or middle school. And after years of training, they have elevated their game… and are ready to join the proud tradition that is Garbage Dump Sentinel Corp. And really, has there ever been a better way to fight for truth, justice, and the American way than checking for contraband at the garbage dump? No, there hasn’t. The only way to top it would be to give you a side arm while you do it. And that’s just too awesome to imagine.

Anticipating resistance from the Garbage Dump Sentinel if he sees us pulling out a bunch of contraband, I formulate a strategy for emptying our truck based on bad sex… get it off, and get it off quick.


Most of what we're hauling is heavy stuff. Once it’s out the truck and on the ground… it’s staying there. Not because I won’t lift it back on the truck, but because I won't AND I can’t. It’s just physics. The more we get into that dumpster the less we have to take back with us. So we begin tossing our wares in a dumpster; a dumpster that was clearly marked for wood.

I suppose the loud crashing and tinkling of breaking glass must have alerted the garbage monitor that something wasn't quite right – you could almost read the thought process on his face, “hey, wait a minute, I took earth science in 6^th grade, and if there’s one thing I learned, it’s that wood doesn’t shatter like that – what’s going on here?” He comes over, looking at each piece that we throw in, seeing that each is clearly NOT wood, and waits patiently for us to realize on our own that we’re violating the rules... a realization that was not to happen.

Neither his patience nor his disapproving gaze affects me in the least; I continue purging the truck at a frenetic pace. Glass – wood, they’re basically the same right? No? Well they are today. Finally when the monitor could take no more, when we send glass, electronics, and clothes tumbling in the bin with abject wanton disregard for the rules, when our flagrant violation of the rules continues on without even a hint of remorse or reversal, he finally exerts his hall monitor power and sends us away. I completely understood too. I mean I would have done the same thing…

…but um… yeah, please believe that everything that I managed to get out of the truck and on the ground, stayed on the ground.