Send in the (Ass)Clowns

I have long held that, separately, my husband and I are fairly intelligent people. But put us together, and we make one big stupid person.

What was once valued in each of us as common sense, evaporates the moment we join forces. A plan that, on the outset, would sound to anyone else like something a drunk scribbled on his napkin after last-call seems like the blueprint for a brilliant proposition, to the combined perspectives of John and Karen. In the case of our move back to Florida, after a job-related twelve-month stint in North Carolina, we had it all figured out. Packing up the apartment and moving ourselves was going to be easy, quick, and free of melodramatics.

Well, that was how it sounded over a few beers, months before we actually anticipated implementing our strategy.

You never realize how much of a mind-boggling mess you’ve made of your home, temporary or otherwise, until you move. What I mean is that humans live with varying degrees of the hoarding impulse: that need to keep “my Precious!” close to us, whether it be a favorite mug within a sparsely stocked china cabinet or four sets of spare utensils—one invariably made of melamine—stored in the garage, just in case.

Regardless of the severity of the compulsion, we all love to scatter our possessions throughout our personal space, loaded into drawers and cupboards and closets and under beds. As a result, the sudden act of amalgamation in which we bundle up all our stuff and send it on a road trip over multiple state lines can become the near-insurmountable task that leads to a mental meltdown, if you don’t do it right.

And we didn’t do it right.

We should have known this grand embarkation was going to be anything but smooth, when the U-Haul place with which we reserved a trailer contacted us two days prior to our move date and informed us that they’d run out of the kind we needed. There then began hours of frantic phone calls to all the U-Hauls in a thirty-mile radius, until at last we were rewarded, like stumbling onto an oasis amid the burning desert sands…and which you simply pray no camels have pooped in.

But the cargo trailer we received was worn and spotted with rust. Its sides looked like someone with anger issues had battered it with a sledgehammer, and it made a disconcerting clicking noise as it was dragged up behind our Hyundai Santa Fe.

My husband and I exchanged looks.

“You sure that’s okay?” I asked the gentleman, to which he responded by wiping his nose with a grunt and kicking the nearest fender.

“She’s tested.”

Not sure what that meant.

“How about that one instead?” John asked and pointed at a non-piece-of-sh*t trailer down the line.

“Nah,” the attendant answered and positioned himself to kick at the underside of the trailer’s tongue. “New safety chains on this one.” He sent the bright metal links swinging with a clatter.

I looked at John.

John shrugged. “New chains.”

Ah. How foolish of us to question the merits of that. It surely would make all the difference. This is because safety chains, as their name implies, are meant as an extra measure of protection. Without them, the next big bump you hit could accidentally disengage the trailer from the hitch, in which case: Woe to the unlucky Volkswagon driver behind you.

Regardless, before our sure-footed friend could kick at—and possibly dislodge—anything else, he bent down and went to work hooking us up.

And to the apartment we returned, where John spent the next forty-five minutes getting back in the groove of what it means to maneuver with a clunky breakfast-nook-sized compartment hanging off your ass. But he didn’t give up, no matter the number of times he had to pull forward, back up, pull forward, back up, until he had carefully taken up four parking spaces and substantially pissed off all our neighbors.

We were off to a roaring start.

A bit of reflection here: When we chose our apartment, we deliberately selected the third floor. The top floor. This was done in a state of hallucinatory optimism, in which we had envisioned ourselves getting more exercise, becoming healthier as a result of lugging bags of groceries up three flights until we could practically sprint—gazelle-like—up the stairs each evening after work. Instead, we dreaded those stairs and cursed the complex for lack of an elevator as we dawdled on the ground floor each day, trying to muster the energy and casting accusatory glances at one another, though we knew there was but one thing to blame for the decision: Our “one-big-stupid-person” defect.

And those stairs became a main character of sorts—a villain, actually—in the troubled tale of our departure.

As is our custom, we were gradual in our initial efforts to pack. When the move is a month or two away and “it’s just a little apartment,” it instills in you a false conviction that there’s “plenty of time” to compress the contents of your transitory dwelling into neatly organized parcels.

Prior to the encroaching move date, after work we would arrange items in a random box until finishing it off a few nights later. Then we’d carefully tape it closed and meticulously label it. Each time we accomplished such a task, one of us would give the other a kiss on the cheek and a playful swat on the backside as that person went to stack the completed container in the corner of the small living room. Quite a calm scene compared to what later transpired on the eve of our egress.

Fast forward to the day we were to be ousted from our apartment: You’d see two people crawling up from a makeshift pallet of blankets on the floor, which had crudely taken the place of the bed we’d already given away. We scrambled to the kitchen for coffee, in a panic because we’d overslept after a wakeful night of wedging brimming boxes into the back of that rolling trashcan of a U-Haul.

Painstakingly preparing each newspaper-wrapped belonging a week before suddenly phased into frantically taping shut old shoe boxes full of batteries, Q-tips, and canned asparagus and throwing them towards the door.

And the stairs—God, the stairs! Up and down, up and down, hour upon hour we climbed those steps like wretched souls forced into eternal damnation on the StairMaster of Hell. It became a torturous repetition of the day before, when we’d endlessly schlepped our goods to the ground floor in a stupor.

But the stairs finally won, finally broke us. Only by some small miracle did we both avoid missing a step and tumbling down the length of them…a fate which, at one point, didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.

We began to fill boxes too large for us to even chance carrying them down together. Instead, we placed them at the top of the landing and savagely kicked them to whop-whop-whop their way down like fat cardboard Slinkies. And that act quickly gave way to a frenzy of stuffing sundries into garbage bags and hurling them out the opening on the third floor landing with a shout of “Incoming!” as one of us stood below to ensure that no wandering dogs or toddlers were inadvertently caught in the crossfire.

And the clock ticked on.

We were running dangerously close to our deadline of having the front office shut its doors before we could drop off our keys. So, in true “one-big-stupid-person” fashion, we powered on and ignored the stares of those residents across the parking lot who clutched each other in fear or leaned out from their balconies, awestruck as they watched the freak show.

Our feather mattress topper—which we inexplicably kept, despite having no mattress to go with it—was snagged by a tree as it sailed through the air to then hang like a lumpy corpse from the branches. John at first attempted to rescue it, but was soon shouting, “Leave it! We have to save ourselves!”

In hysterical agreement, I grabbed up an armful of dress shirts still on their hangers and hurried down. I rushed towards our small 2014 Hyundai Sonata—our boring but practical runaround car. And then, as if trapped in slow-motion on one of those YouTube “epic fail” videos, I stepped off the curb, turned my ankle, and went down in a heap.

Nearby, John hugged his stack of bath towels harder and—with no look of sympathy whatsoever—he declared, “Oh, no you don’t! I am NOT loading all the rest of this by myself!”

It was a heartfelt statement to which I instantly responded by wrestling myself out from under the jumble of clothing to claw my way up the car door and shrilly insist that I was absolutely fine. I even hopped around in the sick semblance of a jig, just to illustrate how fan- f*%king-tastic I was. And I carried on.

Until my left ankle started to swell to the point of actually spilling over the rim of my tennis shoe. As I clubfooted my way towards the U-Haul, I gritted my teeth and asked casually, “Mind if we take a fiver?”

At which point I popped a handful of ibuprofen and iced down the bulbous injury with a last lonely package of frozen waffle fries. I sat on the floor, on our pathetic blanket pallet, and smiled woodenly, again to show how freakin’ “fine” I still was.

And the rotten cherry on top: We still had to clean. Fun fact: Did you know that it’s possible to effectively scrub a bathtub while simultaneously screaming and beating your head against the tile wall? Well, it is!

But we made it. We had to surreptitiously ditch the Dirt Devil under the stairwell when we ran out of room in the cars, but we made it. With an unexpected acrobatic flourish to amaze any onlooker, we finished with ten minutes to spare.

As we pulled out in a sluggish procession—I in front and John with our trailer bringing up the rear—we passed all the abandoned pieces of office and kitchen equipment we’d deposited in front of the dumpsters. Most had signs attached, ranging from a neatly penned caveat of “Printer works, but scanner needs calibration” to a chicken-scratch reproach of “What do you care what’s wrong with it? It’s free.”

Then came the actual drive out of North Carolina. And here I pause to pay homage to our beloved, poor old workhorse of a vehicle: our 2004 Hyundai Santa Fe.

Once gold, it is now dulled to a distressed beige, the paint scabbing and peeling like a psoriasis-afflicted animal. Though we’ve long been aware that it belongs in the opening credits of Sanford and Son, we reserve a deep respect for our mechanical brute. For it was the Santa Fe who also moved us from Texas over to Florida to begin with. As in this case, we had overloaded it, over-pushed it, and yet it over-delivered for us. It was accustomed to the abuse, perhaps, and—dare I say—thrived on it. So when we slapped the tarnished tongue of the trailer onto the ball hitch, it was like calling an old soldier back into service.

In a ridiculous parody of the past, we made it even harder on ourselves this trip, for we had so haphazardly arranged our possessions that they overflowed around each of our respective driver’s seats. Both the Santa Fe and Sonata themselves were as overstuffed as the trailer, so that we had fishing rods and other pointy goods sticking out between the front seats.

Therefore, whenever John turned the wheel of the Santa Fe, he’d bump his elbow and subsequently the car horn. I had to roll down a back window of the Sonata to accommodate a broom handle which kept smacking against a bag of pots and pans, which created a clamorous symphony of idiotic proportions. So not only were we an eyesore to all those we passed, but we became a veritable cavalcade of cacophony.

Honk! Honk! Dong-dong-dong! Scritchy-scritchy-ding! Honk! Clang!

If you had happened to be driving peacefully along south I-95 at that time, you would have thought the procession blowing by you on the road was nothing less than a wheeled travesty of transportation. Especially the mongrel monster that was our Santa Fe dutifully hauling our cornucopia of garbage.

Yes, our very own Shitty-Shitty-Bang-Bang. But rather than sprouting wings and flying over the countryside to transport us with ease to our destination, this one barreled down the interstate like a Mad Max tank reject.

And that’s why I thought all the truckers were keeping their distance. Because, driving ahead of John, I kept glancing in the mirror to reassure myself that he had not exploded into a ball of flames or run aground on some unfortunate MINI Cooper. And I saw the eighteen-wheelers who backed off as we approached. Then, oddly enough, a minimum of three such truckers pulled up beside John on the left side, lingered for a while, and then shot onward.

Finally, my cell phone rang and it was John telling me in an ominous Liam Neeson-like voice, “We need to exit now.”

And it was perfect timing. Because it was nearing sunset, my ibuprofen had worn off, and we’d just entered an area of rural South Carolina that had few exits but lots of missing persons reports.

And naturally we chose the most deserted looking exit, replete with boarded-up gas stations and distant banjo music. We pulled into a parking lot that was comprised solely of potholes and came to a honking, clanging, sputtering stop. I swung open my door, my foot already numb as it again stretched the capacity of my tennis shoe, and hobbled over. I was a frantic blonde Igor without the hump, gasping in Peter Lorre’s voice, “Yes, Master? What is wrong?”

Also, evidently somewhere between Fayetteville, NC and the South Carolina border, deep in the recesses of the Santa Fe cargo hold a bottle of Pine-Sol had busted open and had filled the inside with its overpowering odor. So when John climbed out to meet me, he spilled from the Santa Fe like a forest of Christmas trees had vomited him forth.

As it happened, the brand new safety chains had broken. They had been clattering along the highway and bouncing off the pavement in a shower of sparks. This was what the truckers had been trying to helpfully gesture to John, who—misinterpreting their benevolent intentions—had more than likely flipped some of them the bird. So, too, was the electrical connection yanked apart, the wires then frayed from the friction of the roadway. And therefore, no lights on the trailer.

“Ohhnn no!” I groaned in my nasal Igor voice.

Grunting and stamping my foot to bring feeling back to it, I managed to mash the terminals back together. I rose up, panting, and waited for his assessment.

“That should work,” he mumbled.

But he mumbled it as a question. And that inspired zero confidence in me.

It was that moment when we saw a derelict ambling around the nearby deserted strip mall—sans banjo, but oddly enough equipped with a duct-taped tennis racket. I grabbed my husband’s arm, with all the bug-eyed excitement of my mental Peter Lorre impersonation.

“Master, we must go!”

Next up: Our harrowing drive into Bluffton, SC on an extended two-lane route. It had long since grown dark and I stayed directly behind John to keep an eye on the fireworks display going off between the Santa Fe and its trailer. There were no lights on the U-Haul, of course, so that I also had to insert myself closely behind it in order to provide my husband a buffer against unsuspecting fellow motorists. We were so close to our sojourn at the pre-booked hotel, and I was almost anguished with the need to safeguard my equally beleaguered partner until our arrival.

“No!” I could hear in my head, in that snorting Igor voice. “No, I must protect Master!”

This attentiveness resulted in two unfortunate byproducts: 1) I looked like an asshole who loved to tailgate, and 2) I looked like an asshole who was not willing to pass this lumbering beast so that others behind us could get on with their lives.

As we made our relentless trek along the stretch of highway branching off I-95, one could almost hear the cackling of Macbeth’s witches as they chanted words that would have painted a glorious picture of our predicament and served as a dire warning to all those in our path: “By the pricking of our thumbs, something STUPID this way comes!”

We at last turned off the main road and located the Candlewood Suites that was tucked away in a serpentine tangle of neighborhood streets. We burst into the parking lot like an impromptu circus looking for a place to throw down its three rings and crank up the calliope for The Greatest Shit Show on Earth. We squealed to a stop as the overloaded U-Haul nearly plowed into a lonely Prius in the back corner. And what the light from the flickering street lamp overhead revealed that night was a couple of trained monkeys, exhaustedly stumbling their way out of their respective vehicles to stand and stare at one another, like each were dumbstruck at having made it there alive.

In our delirium, we considered going out to grab a bite, but in light of our luck thus far, we made the first good decision since we began our f*%cked-up pilgrimage: We stayed put.

John pounded on the back of the U-Haul until the rickety door rattled and shot up like a 1950’s cartoon window shade. Then he rummaged blindly in the nearest trash bag like a hobo in a scavenger hunt and tossed three Snickers, a box of jalepeno Cheez-Its, and a two-liter bottle of orange Fanta at me. With that, he held his arms out to the sides and nodded down at what he had produced, like I was supposed to applaud.

And honestly, I nearly did.

In the hotel room, we collapsed beside each other on the bed, where not long after, we lay coated in cracker crumbs like two ornery croquettes spurning the deep-fryer in the same way we ignored all possibility of a hot shower. Passing out just sounded loads better than trying to wash off the chemical stink of Douglas fir (thanks to the power of Pine-Sol, baby).

We spent the better part of the next morning arguing with U-Haul and practicing amazing self-restraint, considering they’d let us drive off with their best rust-bucket sporting new safety chains that were anything but what their name promised. Well past a decent breakfast hour, we alternated between cell phones, because we’d both forgotten to plug them in for charging the night before. (That’s what sixty-eight fluid ounces of flat full-sugar soda and a Cheez-It coma will do to your memory.)

We were told we’d have to take our raggedy vaudeville act down to Savannah, Georgia if we wanted to have a chance of making it to Florida without becoming the next flaming roadside statistic. Apparently, that was the only U-Haul location with the expertise to keep our insane excuse for a budget rental intact and functional. So we settled back into our saddle sores and revved up the moron-mobile for the next leg of our adventure.

Down the road we went, riding our motorized junk heap like a fantastical vehicular contraption straight out of a Dr. Seuss nightmare, honking our floozel-finkers and ringing our zyzor-dingels for all to hear.

Here, I pause for another side note, because I feel it has a significant bearing on the way our epic voyage should be characterized:

Savannah has been nicknamed Hostess City of the South, that antebellum jewel of Georgia. Back during the War Between the States, General Sherman was said to refuse to burn it to the ground because it was far too rich with beauty. And one can easily understand that admiration, when seeing the graceful bows of the Live Oaks form a moss-draped canopy over the quaint thoroughfares lined with ornate iron street lamps. One can savor the sound of the many stone fountains that stand as glorious centerpieces in the historic town squares. The sights leave little doubt that no infantry torch could ever be touched to the stately mansions. So, how did we honor that long-cherished testament to the southern city’s old-world charm?

Why, we dragged our hillbilly caravan crap-fest right through the middle of it, of course.

That was the moment we discovered how much our GPS hated our guts. Why else would it direct us into the heart of Savannah, where the indignity of our desperation was laid bare, unless to satisfy its own spite? I swear that every time that genteel feminine voice advised, “When possible, make a u-turn”—followed by a bag of loose utensils slamming against the side window—she would giggle.

As our carnival of the absurd honked and clanged its way along the avenues—mercifully avoiding the humiliation of bounding over the two-hundred-year-old cobblestones of the River Street district—we wondered what the punchline might be to this giant joke that was our ill-advised and terribly executed expedition.

After that excruciating twenty-five-miles-per-hour crawl, we then found the U-Haul repair center on the outskirts of town. When we pulled in, they did not know what to make of us. All that was lacking in our comedy troupe was a bewildered-looking Jed Clampett hanging off the roof with a shotgun cradled in one arm, yelling, “Granny! I think yer moonshine still done fell off the back!”

The people at this U-Haul, however, were a welcome change. Very friendly, very skilled, and—when they opened one door of the Santa Fe—they were more than willing to overlook the way we’d crammed all our underwear into a plastic bucket. These guys were princes.

So the master mechanic assured us he’d take care of putting on new safety chains and re-wiring the whole trailer, even throwing in new wiring on our own hitch. He went on to recommend that we give ourselves a much-needed break and try the café next door, because they served a mean stack of pecan pancakes. Like I said: princes.

So, with the tenuous hope that our luck had turned, we happily ingested said pancakes and got back on the road. And things went well. Too well. It actually began to make us uncomfortable at how well things were going.

I would call John on the cell phone. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Is this weird?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay. Just checking.” I hung up the phone with a beep.

Five minutes later. No calamity had occurred. No disaster on the horizon. So I called him back.

“Something’s wrong.”

“I agree. None of the tires have spun off yet.”

“And all your tail lights are working.”

“Let’s pull over.”

I nodded vigorously, like he could see me. “Yes, let’s.”

And so we gingerly eased ourselves out of traffic and down an off-ramp until we came to a Cracker Barrel. We each got out of our cars and walked to meet each other beside the trailer. We were a mere seventy miles from our destination. The grand experiment in our locomotion lunacy was nearly at an end and our arrival was at hand.

Most people know that old Robert Frost poem that ends “But I have promises to keep,  / And miles to go before I sleep.” Well, evening was approaching, but we ourselves were almost out of the woods. And the number of miles leading to our beds was infinitesimal compared with the prolonged pain of our stressful mission thus far.

And so, as if hearing a chorus of angelic voices humming in the background, we smiled and grasped hands. This was the home stretch, at long last. We needed to celebrate. Luckily, we were hungry and, well, we were in the parking lot of a revered southern restaurant chain that would country-fry a ball of mayonnaise if we asked them to. It was perfect.

So, after a palate-pleasing meal of breaded, battered, and/or sauce-drenched goodness, it was time to mount up for the final segment of our mishap-riddled return to Florida.

And it took a mere twenty minutes before both our sphincters suffered irreparable damage from the colossal clenching that ensued.

I was following him at a distance, yawning as the music of the radio wrapped around me and swayed me like a babe in a cradle. It was refreshing to pass the time without bellowing expletives like a Tourette’s patient. I wondered if John, up ahead in the Santa Fe, felt the same reassuring relief. Our tummies were full, our attitudes adjusted.

I grinned as I drowsily rocked from side to side in my seat, delighted at first—like the grand-prize dumbsh*t that I was—to see the trailer in front of me mirroring my motions. And then swinging wider…and then fishtailing…

“Oh my ever-lovin’ God!”

I grabbed the cell phone from the cupholder and jammed in the speed dial button for John’s number, almost earning myself a broken thumb in the process. He didn’t answer. But then again, surely one of the first obstacles to taking a phone call is when you find yourself fighting seven-thousand wildly wagging pounds of “Oh sh*t!”

I was surprised every brake light on our vehicles didn’t explode with the force of our collective panic. We made the shoulder of that highway look like someone had taken a telephone-pole-sized stick and thrashed our two Hyundai’s like bloated steel piñatas until a couple of the doors popped open. And like manic children, we scrambled along the roadside, snatching spilled forks, Kleenex boxes, cans of green beans, and a stack of summer-weight fedoras that I had once insisted would look “pretty snazzy” if I ever got up the nerve to wear one in public.

After throwing the scattered sundry articles back into the cars and ramming against the doors in the same way one sprawls on top of a stubborn suitcase to close it, we turned to each other. Obviously, the fatigue from our misadventures had caught up—harried us right to the edge of the cliff. And in the face of its pursuit, we had gleefully hurled ourselves into the chasm.

John wiped a hand down his face and cleared his throat. “Coffee?”

Neither one of us was going to acknowledge the giant pant-load we were each carrying after the incident.

“Uh, yep.”

Honk-honk! Rattle-ding-ding! Honk! We approached the closest McDonald’s with our usual fanfare. And you may ask: Did we then snake and scrape our way—cargo trailer and all—through that Mickey D’s drive-thru instead of getting out and walking in, like normal people?

You bet your McAss, we did.

The teenager who took the money and handed John his extra large coffee just stared down the length of the Santa Fe and trailer like he was straining to see the next float in the freak parade. And naturally, that float was mine. So, I sailed right towards him, giving my best beauty-queen wave, and plucked my coffee from his outstretched hand.

But later that evening we finally made it. I pulled first into the driveway with a dong-clang-bang! before the Sonata gave a final shudder and went still. Then I helped John back the trailer in. Which was a mistake on his part, even during regular circumstances. But I was so tired at that point, that after watching him pull forward, re-angle, and back up…pull forward, re-angle, and back up no fewer than five times—each repetition like an icepick to the head—I let the universe have the last laugh. The trailer rolled right into the middle of the flower bed and when it bumped the single ornamental pot, I gave John two thumbs-up.

Then we both stood in front of the Santa Fe for a moment in solemn silence. The old soldier had gotten us home once again. When duty called, it had trumpeted its allegiance. Together, we gave it a formal salute in gratitude for its service. And with that, we shuffled into the garage.

We left the cars and the trailer untouched that night. And if you have to ask why—after all that I have related to you here—then you’ll understand if I kindly ask you to go f*%k yourself. (Please don’t take that personally. It’s the trauma talking.)

And so ends the parable. My sincere wish is that all who read it—including those who dropped out somewhere near the rambling half-way mark—will find value in its lessons.

At the end of the day, it’s not about the journey at all. It’s not about the turd of a trailer you may find yourself stuck with. It’s about recognizing your own weaknesses and embracing them, so that you can learn to function in spite of them. In the case of my husband and me, our weakness is each other. So we do embrace that and, somehow, we survive everything that comes our way or which, more often than not, we bring upon ourselves.

Because we’d rather be “one big stupid person” than two fairly intelligent—but separate and miserable—individuals.

(This post is dedicated to John: my safety chain who never breaks!)