The Hyperion Chronicles

The Hyperion Chronicles
“When I grow up I’m opening a shelter for battered shrimp”

#306 Moving Days

I moved last week.

I don’t care all that much for moving.

Actually, that doesn’t quite cover it.

I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate (how many is that? I better add a few so you won’t misunderstand me) hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate moving.

I hate everything about it. For one, I’m a very loyal person. When I go to a restaurant or a video store, and establish good contact with someone, it is that person I go to from then on. I’m the same way with inanimate objects. When I was in college, I had a fan and a stick (from the window) who were like members of the family to me (“Fan” and “Stick”). I once kept a cushion from a couch my parents cruelly got rid of for years, because it was the first couch I could ever remember.

I’m that way with houses too. To me, moving seems very disloyal. No matter how unattractive a dwelling is, it’s still home. I lived in the barrio once. I’ve lived in a place next door to a crack house. I lived in a house that was slanted, and whenever the dryer came on all the lights flickered. I lived in this house once that was two feet away from the next house, and this old woman would have very loud sex every night right by the window until finally my friend Snoop and I…well, you get the point: I haven’t lived in castles, but wherever I was, I came to feel very protective of it. Leaving always feels like a horrible betrayal.

A lot of little things bother me. I get very used to where I live; the idiosyncrasies. Sometimes it’s something as unimportant as where all the light switches are, but believe you me: when you’re itching for melon at three in the morning and boxes are strewn all over the floor, it can be quite handy to know where those lights are.

Other little things as well. Noises in the night. You get used to them, even comforted by them. Mostly, though, you know what they are, or at least they are familiar. (Speaking of noises, when I was younger, I would memorize where to step so that each stair would not creak. Another advantage to a familiar house). Then there’s—and I don’t mean to be vulgar but I can’t be the only one who’s gone through this—the bathroom situation. I’ve never been a man who could just fling it to the winds. I have to be comfortable. Comfort is a big deal towards, uh…you know; regulation. When you move, suddenly all that is gone.

On top of all that, it seems like I always start to make new friends—possibly good friends—right before moving. People right around me I’d seen the whole time, and it finally comes together and then Bam! You’re gone. I remember that happened when we moved right before my ninth grade year. I’d just started to get cool. It happened again when we moved right before my senior year; I seemed to have the world figured out. And like that; we were gone.

This last time the same thing happened. Over a year with a limited fiend-base and then suddenly I started meeting people left and right. I should have been suspicious. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not like I can’t ever see them again. I only moved 45 minutes away. But now, instead of a spontaneous “Let’s head to Denny’s or Boston Pizza” there will have to be painstaking schedule checking and planning and all the things a spry Hyperion hates.

I suppose it sounds like I’m whining. Well, yes, I suppose; that’s what I wrote this column for: to whine. And I readily admit I had it far better than some. Growing up in a pastor’s family, we moved, but not nearly as much as others I’ve met. Parents in a high tech? Yikes. The Military? Fuggedaboutit. And don’t even get me started on broken homes.

Actually, do get me started. I had both parents through every single move growing up. I’d add a hundred moves to my total to keep that intact. (By the way, if you’re wondering, this is, best I can figure, my 19^th house. I’ve also lived in five states, three countries, two continents, and six planets.)

Also, while there are some places I lived that were perhaps unadvisable, there is not one move I would ever undo for the simple reason of the people I met. I wouldn’t give them back for the wide world. When I first moved to Canada (as part of the Witness Protection Program), the very first day we went to Blockbuster and I met Coco, who would become my first Canadian reader and lead me to dozens of other readers and eventual friends. I even made a friend of the cable guy who hooked me up with high speed internet for the first time (thank the gods!) so I could write this column.

Come to think of it, on the day of this last move, wracked with pain though I was (not just emotional pain, but severe back pain), I met the new cable guy who hooked us up. I suppose he’s the very first reader I’ve made in this new house (and I’d like to give him a “shout-out”). I’m sure there will be more to come. I’m not one of those destiny people, but it seems that wherever I’ve gone I’ve met people and have done things that have shaped my life to bring me where I am today. Experiences and relationships that weren’t all happy but perhaps all necessary.

So maybe moving isn’t as bad as all that. But I still hate it. I hate not being able to find the phone or the electric skillet or soap or toilet paper (mock if you will, but you can’t imagine how important this is). I hate fumbling around, trying to get used to the new sounds, the new smells; the feel of a place. I hate missing my old walls, and wondering if these new walls will talk to me like before. I hate not knowing what channel The Simpsons is now on and how many minutes in the new stove to base the fries and where on the dial it will give me a hot—but not scalding—shower and all the hundred and one little things that make up living.

I hate moving.

Did I mention that?

Hyperion
August 4, 2004

Credits
Thanks to Koz for Editing
Thanks to the new Cable guy (who I’ve yet to come up with an alias for)
Thanks to everyone who helped us move, since my back was so bad that day that I couldn’t move a bottle of soda. I’m not kidding: I brought in 4 two-liters and I had to lie down for 30 minutes.