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By Root 479 0

(a bulky 375-pound oak and leather desk) down three flights of stairs and up another three. I was perturbed and confused at the same time. Why oak? Why not pine? Pine is grossly underrated, at least from a mover’s point of view. Lightweight, durable, stylish. And leather? I want to meet that man, the man that looked at a cow and thought, “Well, I do need somewhere to put my computer.” But, in the end, after you move a desk like that up the stairs, without a scratch on it, it’s worth it. You feel superhuman, like one of those Russian behemoths you see on TV competing to be the strongest man in the world. You want to strap an eighteen-wheeler to your back and pull it down the street and then carry one hundred-kilogram anvils up the stairs—in each arm—for absolutely no reason other than to say, “Look at what a beast I am.” Egos thrive (or die) in the world of moving. Even with Derrick carrying his end of that desk up the stairs with ease and me wobbling around like a newborn colt testing my land legs, it was still quite fulfilling.

And so were the longer moves. Generally, our moves would average around eight hours, but every now and then, one would go eleven or twelve if we were sent out to Kiawah or Seabrook Island, where we would move one mansion around the corner to another, newly constructed mansion. Those moves usually required two or three trips, even with the way Derrick strategically packed the truck tight and to the ceiling.

But then came the eighteen-and-a-half-hour move, the move that marked my rite of passage as a mover.

We were on Daniel Island, which is truly a world all its own. Live there, stay there. Jan Sully, or “Mizz Sully,” had what we call in the moving biz “an assload of stuff.” When we did the walk-through, we couldn’t believe it. You could tell from the looks on our faces that we didn’t know how we were ever going to be able to complete that move. Her house had room after room after room. Her kitchen was larger than our apartment, and the master bedroom had a living room. And each room was loaded with boxes and furniture and mattresses. Then, when we went outside by the pool, we were greeted by enough lawn furniture to host a party of fifty of her friends’ closest friends. It was incredible.

“Well, ma’am, this is a monster move,” I told her. “It’s going to take a good bit of time.”

She laughed at me. One, single, hardcore, sarcastic laugh. And then she led us to the garage.

I wasn’t upset at the fact that her two-car garage was filled to the ceiling. I wasn’t upset that she could have furnished a nine thousand square foot house (which she had done, in fact, when she lived in New Jersey, “just two houses down from Terrell Owens,” the football star) with everything she had crammed into her current four-thousand-square-foot dwelling. I wasn’t even upset that she had gotten her full money’s worth on the tall wardrobe boxes by stuffing the bottoms with shoes and linens. I was just upset that she was so much like my own mom, unable to throw anything away, ever. “Oh, dear, can’t throw that away,” Mizz Sully would say. “That was the first (enter item of your choice) that Gerald and I ever bought. Sentimental value, you know.” I could understand photo albums and pictures that her daughter had drawn when she was four years old. Her son’s first baseball mitt or a pair of his baby shoes. Fine. But this lady had taken it to another level. She had saved every shirt, blanket, dish, and book that she had ever come across. She had six garden hoses. I couldn’t believe all the stuff she had.

And most of it was in mint condition, untarnished. She had $13 less than God, and she wanted to make sure we knew it. “Guys, please, please, please. Be careful with this. It cost twenty four hundred dollars. It can’t be replaced.” She would have loathed raising me. “See, that’s why we don’t have nice things,” was my mom’s tagline. Mizz Sully’s lawn chairs had a higher resale value than my pickup truck, and her indoor furniture was all antique and pretty much in its original condition. I even felt bad washing my hands with the