Buried in Boxes

There is nothing more heinous than moving. Being confronted with every life decision you’ve ever made and having the overwhelming responsibility of determining what to keep and what to leave.

Did I really buy a pink wig? Why are there so many mugs? How do I have so many clothes when I only fit into two pairs of jeans and a sweatshirt?

I had been packing for days. *Correction--I had been toying with the idea of packing for days but never managed to get around to it. Until 24 hours before the actual move. Then the surge of adrenaline and fear kicked in and I realized that if I didn’t start putting things in boxes, I would be doing the opposite of moving--I would be staying.

While the boxes were being built and the tape gun became loaded I realized that:

• Buying a Costco-size bottle of Tylenol is useless because the Tylenol will expire before you get through the entire bottle. And if you do manage to get through the entire bottle, your liver is probably no longer with you.

• The small, adorable soaps and lotions that I lovingly pilfered from hotel rooms all over the world will never get used

• I didn’t buy enough boxes. So the jewel bag filled with other jewel bags would be a sufficient enough packing device.

The hours scraped by and I started hallucinating that the house had begun growing objects on its own! Every time I walked out of a room confident that a counter had been cleared off, I walked back in and saw that I had missed a salt shaker, a hairbrush and, of course, the never-ending electrical wires. Those twisty, tangled, strangulation devices that I couldn’t straighten out, no matter how hard I shook them.

The creaking floorboards made the wall of packed cardboard boxes sway menacingly. As the night wore on, the bone-chilling truth became apparent.

I would never be leaving The House in Maywood. It was going to bury me alive in my own filthy, materialistic possessions. My remnants would be buried in the floorboards under a thick layer of lost q-tips and dental floss. My destiny unraveled before me as bright as the blazing sun: I would be haunting the future homeowners until the end of time, warning them about the side effects of long-term Tylenol usage.