Boot Camp: July 6, 2010

Boot camp.

As I previously mentioned, I don't sleep much the night before we hit Brooklyn. J often describes me as the little kid who can't sleep the night before Christmas (which I was, as a matter of fact) writ much more extreme. That is, I can't sleep the night before ANY significant event—the first day of school, prior to an important meeting, the opening of a production, anything. So one might imagine how little I sleep this particular night. Zero. Which is important only inasmuch as it may help to explain some of what happens in the subsequent paragraphs.

The trip in the dinosaur truck to NYC is actually quite uneventful. Google Maps and I have made up (still not sure what I did to piss it off so badly in the first place, but we have reached a quiet detente and I don't feel like spending my morning discussing it...you know how moody these apps can be), and I'm confident that the directions from Westchester to Brooklyn are accurate. Traffic gets ridiculously heavy on the BQE (that's the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, for you foreigners (like how I start to mock you, now that I've lived here a week (or how I put parenthetical phrases inside other parenthetical phrases so I can end the whole mish-mash with completely unintelligible punctuation?)?)), but that's to be expected. A little over an hour later, we're...home.

Home. This term will take on added significance over the coming days, as we seek to redefine it for ourselves—but especially for the kids. Each of them has a unique and developmentally-appropriate definition of the term, and we find we have a great deal of work to do in order to help them come to terms with the finality of the move. More on this as we go on.

One of my major apprehensions (and there have been many, boy howdy) has been where to park the truck while we move in. 5th Street, where our apartment lies on the second story of an early 20th-century brownstone, is one-way, with cars parked on both sides and MAYBE enough room for two car-widths in between. How exactly one parks a 26-foot moving van so as to allow for traffic to flow unabated, I've no idea. It turns out that neither does Kenny Warren.

When I booked the dinosaur truck on uhaul.com three weeks ago, I made the decision to hire moving helpers on each side of the trip. Clarence and Jeff had pulled this duty in GJ, and I had chosen the highly-rated Warren Brothers Moving Co. in Brooklyn. As I circle the neighborhood trying to determine the best course of action, I come across a thin, 20-something dude in a ballcap and carrying a Nalgene bottle. He seems vaguely to be signaling to me as I drive by, but for all I know he needs money or a job or wants to rent my wife for a while so I drive past. Three times I do this. Finally, as I approach for the next lap, I notice that he's on his cell phone. I also notice that I'm on MY cell phone, talking to Kenny Warren. Aha. No dummy, this guy. I realize the dude is in fact Kenny Warren and that I've now driven right past him three (almost four) times and ignored his salutations each and every one of them. Idiot, me.

I pull up alongside him and we make our introductions. He's got a buddy with him, whom I take to be the other of the Warren brothers. It turns out later that Kenny's brother is still back in Colorado—yep, you got it, Colorado. Kenny is actually from Highlands Ranch. No shit. Anyway, the buddy's name is either Greg or Grey. See, I'm never actually introduced to him and by the time Kenny calls him anything it's over 100 degrees and he is slurring his words almost as much as my ears are slurring everything I hear. So, let's call him (with all due respect to the Gregs in my life) Grey, if only because it sounds cooler. Kenny and Grey are here to move us in. I like them immediately, because they seem wholly unfazed by the following bits of information:

1. Our stuff takes up a 26-foot truck. The entire volume of our apartment is somewhat less than that.

2. Today will turn out to be one of the seven hottest days on record in New York City. Not for July 6th, mind you, but EVER. It will end up being 103 degrees with 90 percent humidity. Despite the opening of dozens and dozens of “cooling centers” around the city, more than 20 people will die today from the heat.

3. Our apartment lies up a very steep, very narrow staircase.

4. Our furniture was purchased in Colorado, where one has the premium of space. Hence, there's nothing sleek or light or slender about it. It's big-ass, real-wood, fluffy reclining kind of shit and it weighs a ton.

5. The majority of our boxes are filled with books. Anyone who's ever moved knows how much they hate their library when they have to actually lift it from one place to the next.

See, they know this stuff already—and they just don't seem to care. They are instantly my heroes. I figure that since Kenny's the expert at this, he'll know how to position the truck without disrupting traffic too much. So I ask him. He shrugs and lets me know he's never moved people from a truck this big parked on a street this narrow into a place so small. But he's willing to give it a shot. Once we figure out that if we maneuver the velociraptor to within one foot of the row of vehicles on the right side of the road (a process that I am certain costs me three years of my life due to the stress, 'cause, well, I didn't want to pay for the extra insurance on the truck, see) we reckon that cars will be able to pass on the left. Which turns out to be correct. What DOESN'T work, though, is when trucks, vans, or...ambulances try to pass. In which case they pull up behind the truck, honk, shout all kinds of obscenities at me, and force me to close the cargo door, jump in the truck and drive it around the block again. I repeat this exercise no less than seven times today.

By the time we start unloading in earnest, it's about 11:30 and 100 degrees. Fortunately, the front of our brownstone is shaded by a number of big, very old trees so we are spared 10 degrees or so of summer's wrath. Cold comfort, though. (Pun only intended halfway through writing that, by the way.) It may be of interest to note that I hired moving HELPERS, not movers. The important distinction between the two is that moving HELPERS are people who HELP you move—not who actually MOVE you. Therefore, I'm all in when it comes to lugging my stuff up the stairs. In fact, my guilt over the amount of crap we have and how unbelievably bulky it is causes me to feel compelled to lift all of the heaviest stuff myself. When it's time to bring that wardrobe box up, I'm your guy. When the couch needs hoisted, look no further. In retrospect, I think Kenny and Grey must believe me to be a very, very disturbed man. I pay them to watch me move all of the heaviest stuff I own. I've sort of become a reverse cuckold to my possessions.

It is becoming unbearably hot in our new house. When they were constructed, brownstones were designed to hold in heat as much as possible—folks worried about heat deaths far less in those days, and having to choose between cooling off at Coney Island in July or simply turning into frozen goods in February, they made the obvious call. Also, folks in 1910 weren't dumb enough to own all of the stupid shit we own. They lived simply. Good for them. (Side note: in the coming days, we will haul several hundred pounds of stuff BACK down the stairs in the form of donations to Goodwill and trash. Of course we will.) J has figured out a way to jury-rig one of the two A/C units in the kitchen, which provides a nice blast of cool air...that extends exactly two feet in front of the unit itself. Consequently, she and the kids spend most of their day (wisely) camped...exactly two feet in front of the unit itself.

We MEN, however, have WORK TO DO. And do it we shall! I'm actually feeling pretty good, considering my lack of sleep and impending heat exhaustion. At one point, another truck of a similar size to the U-Haul pulls up behind us, forcing me to move it once again. As I approach the stoplight, I see a heartwarming and typically Brooklyn scene: a group of day care kids crossing 5th Street in front of me with their teachers. They are dressed in identical yellow shirts, and most carry backpacks and bottles of water. Identical shirts notwithstanding, what is so nice about this group of kids is how diverse it is. Wow! Look at THAT! There are black kids and brown kids and white kids and tall kids and short kids and older kids and younger kids and the teachers are also black and brown and white and tall and short. New York is known to be one of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet, and this mixture of kids illustrates that perfectly. I can't wait for Harper and Liam to get to know kids whose parents also made the journey here, but from much farther afield. Very cool.

My light turns green. The kids, however (as kids will do), have not quite finished crossing the street. Their teachers are frantically waving them across, holding their hands, picking up dropped water bottles and looking at me with “sorry!” written across their faces. I'm in no hurry to get through the intersection, taking particular pleasure in continuing to piss off the jerk in the truck behind me. So I wait for them to cross. My light turns red. I make a right turn. No big deal...did it 10,000 times before. As I turn, I notice the NYPD car sitting in the opposite lane of 6th Avenue (the street onto which I am making this right turn). To my surprise, a voice over a loudspeaker says, “THE LIGHT IS RED.” I'm thinking, “very good! You're learning your colors!”--smart ass that I am—when I realize that the loudspeaker voice is intended for me and that I've just...broken the law. Can't turn right on red in NY, see. Duh. I know this on some level, but exhaustion and heat and a myriad of other excuses prevent me from remembering it now. The cop in the driver's seat motions me to roll down my window as I pass. He barks, “Pull it over right THERE. Have your driver's license and registration READY. We will be right BACK.”

Aw, goddammit.

I do as I'm told. I double-park the dinosaur truck on 6th Ave. and wait for my comeuppance. Three hours in the city and I'm already busted. Wow. Nice job, daddy-o. As I wait, though, I'm struck by the irony of the situation. Because I committed a violation, the police are having me commit another violation in order to hand out their punitive measures--double-parking on an infinitely busier street than the one on which I was previously double-parked, thereby dramatically increasing a) the danger to surrounding pedestrians and traffic, and b) the odds that the drivers of one of these trucks who NOW cannot pass me will actually leave his vehicle, shoot me in the face, and go around me anyway. In addition, while I have my driver's license, I most certainly do NOT have the registration for this truck. I have a little slip of paper telling me I get to use it until this afternoon and thanking me for the $2,000 I remitted for this privilege. I'm not sure what the hell I'm going to tell them when they get here, and Kenny, Grey, and the fam might start wondering why on earth it's taking me so long to drive around the block this time.

So I wait. I mean, what else am I gonna do? Leave?

And I wait.

And wait.

I wait for almost 20 minutes. The cops have not returned. I have this image in my mind of them driving away after telling me to pull over, looking deviously at each other, and bursting into uncontrollable laughter as they drive to another part of the city. Or making a bet on how long the dipshit in the dinosaur truck will actually STAY in the middle of the street, waiting for their return. On the other hand, I have another image in my mind of me finally deciding to drive away, only to be tracked down later (how hard would I be to find, really?) and charged not only with making the illegal right turn but also with evading capture and thrown in jail. This image is obviously generated by the little angel on my shoulder, whom I have discovered is not only responsible for representing sound moral judgment but is also an acute, raving paranoiac. Finally, the New Yorker inside me emerges and I decide.

Fuck THIS.

I drive off. I make legal right turns which bring me back to the brownstone and reposition the truck. I had called J to let her know of my dilemma, and she seems somewhat surprised that I drove away. But the fact is, we have stuff to DO here. Let the cops find me. I'm willing to trade a night in lockup for the completion of the task at hand. While this may not be a rational stance, bear in mind that it is now 103 degrees, we have only finished unloading half the truck, and I can no longer think straight. Oh, one more thing: I have not yet eaten today. The perfect storm.

Early in the afternoon, three guys show up from Park Home Furnishings to deliver and install the new bunk beds for the little kids and the new double bed for the big kid. This results in seven adults and two children alongside one another in a 1,200 square foot apartment being stuffed with 2,000 square feet of stuff. Nice. The radius of cooling provided by the air conditioner in the kitchen is now down to about six inches. I cannot seem to feel my legs. J asks me a simple question...

J: Are you guys going to put the other boxes in our room or the kids' room?

R: Llll. Mmm. Brrm.

J: Huh?

R: We...flebble. Prrp. Cridge.

J: What???

R: I'm just...glll. No, it's. We.

J: Honey.

R: Hmm?

J: You don't look so good.

R: No?

J: You're beet red, man.

R: Nah. Grrrm.

J: And you're not making any sense.

R: Yeah, I.

J: You need to take a break. Now.

R: Mmmm. K.


I stick my head in the six-inch cooling zone for a few minutes, and only then do I realize that I am on the verge of a medical emergency. It's funny...I took EMT classes. I'm a certified first responder. I regularly diagnose myself with terrible maladies that I cannot possibly have. And yet here, in this instance, I completely overlook the fact that I'm about 10 minutes from heat exhaustion. ACTUAL heat exhaustion. I'm dehydrated, flushed, and my cognitive functioning is decreasing rapidly. And yet, even once I realize this, there's something in me that will not succumb to it. I'm driven by an insatiable need to finish what I've started. I'm not going to let anyone down here...not J, not the kids, not even Kenny and Grey. And especially not the skeptics. Their voices continue to ring in my ears... “I give 'em six months...” and I dig a little deeper. I know there's a reservoir of strength inside me somewhere, untapped. Just isolating this allows me to access it. I stand up, and I go on. I'm reminded of Pozzo in Godot:

Vladimir: What do you do when you fall far from help?

Pozzo: We wait till we can get up. Then we go on.

So, I get up. And I go on. The haze passes. I drink some water, and in an hour Kenny and Grey and I have completed the unload. The apartment is a fucking disaster area. As we survey it, we realize how much bigger it seemed in our memories and how much work we're going to have to do just to be able to LIVE here. Obviously, there's no way to stay here tonight so J books a hotel room on the phone. While this will turn out to be directly under the elevated J-Z-M lines in a neighborhood of some...um...character, we won't care. We'll all sleep like the dead.

I drive the dinosaur truck across Brooklyn to drop it off, and when I do I feel 20,000 pounds (gross) lighter but also a bit sad. It represents a week in our lives, a bold step, a manifestation of the belief we have in one another and in this ridiculous plan of ours. The truck and I became friends of sorts. I came to know its eccentricities (see also running out of gas while showing ¼ of a tank) and it mine (see also arbitrary bursts of profanity while navigating urban areas), and it performed its task of transporting a family across a continent admirably. And as absurd as it is to thank an inanimate object, I find myself doing just that as I walk away from the U-Haul center towards the subway. So, this is it. We're HERE now. There's no turning back, and I'm pleased to say that we wouldn't have it any other way. I'm proud of J, the kids, Kenny, Grey. And I have to begrudgingly admit that I'm proud of me, too. Today has most likely been the most physically and emotionally grueling one of my life, and I've conquered it. With all due respect to those who serve, I feel like I have a good idea of what it's like to be...a new soldier in basic training. At least for one day, that is.

Oh, I get it. That's why the cops let me go. They knew this soldier had to get back to boot camp. Thanks, guys. I owe you one.