Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [67]
One short week and I had experienced enough drama and turmoil to last my entire year. Mentally, I had been prepared to deal with whatever came my way, but that didn’t erase the fact that I had been so high on life seven days before, and then, just like that, I was left picking up the pieces, wondering if I was ever going to get out of the shelter.
But I knew that in the pendulum of life, the momentum would have to swing in my direction eventually. And my pendulum was preparing to swing back my way.
ELEVEN
MOVIN’ ON UP
Tuesday, September 26
Or so I thought.
It was my first move downtown, and my first experience learning that moving downtown was kind of like an arranged marriage—you hope for the best, you never really know what you’re going to get until you get there, and then, one way or another, you’re totally overwhelmed.
Or, you break your toe.
I was on the move with a random guy, Phillipe, since Shaun had some other important business to deal with. According to the sheet, the move would be a two-bedroom, one living room, one dining room, and one home office. Usually, that would have been a three-man move, but Phillipe and I, tough guys that we were, told Curtis and Jill that since they were short on movers for the day, we could handle it ourselves.
Huge mistake. After about three hours and my sixth trip down the stairs carrying toiletries and hanging clothes, I started to slow down—a first in my moving career. I was so pissed off. It was one of those rare moves where the customer was grossly unprepared. That lady hadn’t packed anything. Not a single thing. Some in-town moves can be way different from moves that go across state lines, and I was coming to that brutal realization. “Hell, we’re only going twelve minutes away, honey. We don’t need any boxes.”
Generally, I wouldn’t have minded since we were getting paid by the hour and the less prepared the customer was, the more hours we received. But that move was an exception to the rule. Mentally, if not physically, I thought I was actually starting to become a real mover—a power mover—and I didn’t have time to worry about petty stuff, like packing the nooks and crannies of a house. Little items or little pieces of furniture were a burden to me. “Here, man, carry this nightstand. I’m gonna grab this dresser.” My head had begun to swell in my short stint at Fast Company, which is pretty funny, since I really wasn’t even that proficient a mover.
So, anyway, there I was, doing my best to stay focused, thinking of what kind of system I could rig up so that we could just toss that lady’s crap down the stairs to make things go quicker. She was on the phone making real estate deals, and she didn’t seem to care at all about the ridiculous job to which she had sentenced us. In fact, she was totally oblivious to it. One time when I was passing by her, she told the person on the other end of her phone conversation to hold on, and she asked me, “Hey, Adam, do you know how long you guys are gonna be, because I have an important meeting to get to?”
“Well ma’am, if you hold on just one second, let me load this desk lamp and these baking sheets onto the truck, and I’ll take a walk through and see what kind of estimate I can make.”
But I didn’t make an estimate. I couldn’t. That move was just too unpredictable, and I tried to explain that to her. “There’s just no telling, ma’am.” She walked away in a huff, and so did I.
But in the process of my huff, I bumped into some lawn chairs leaning up against the wall, which knocked over a hundred-pound steel plate that was also resting on the wall. And I couldn’t move my size thirteens out of the way quick enough. The steel plate fell directly on my right big toe, crushing it.
I’m not sure which was more impressive: the flamboyant dance