One morning I looked out my bedroom window to see an enormous moving van parked in front. A crew of twenty movers waited on the street for the one guy to open the latch on the back. Once done, they immediately got to work. Desks, beds, sofas, and chairs made their way up my sidewalk and into the front door, one by one, one tireless mover at each end.
And on the string of deluxe handcrafted furniture flowed. It just never ended. I lost count after 24 beds.
It was at this point that I grew suspicious. Where was mom? Why did she order forty rocking chairs? No, it had to be a mistake. They must think we’re a school. Or a hospital!
And then the creaking started. It began with the door, but soon it was all around me. The tender shape of a children’s rocking horse poked and bulged through the floorboards. Finally, the door busted open, and in spilled the tangled wreck of furniture, like a wave.
At one point, they settled into the most perfect and pleasing to the eye arrangement you could imagine. But then, as more and more piled in through the doorway, the scene was ruined, and soon I found myself in a mere corner, trapped by the wooden onslaught.
As my space grew smaller by the second, I cried and pleaded with the stuff, begging for a way out before the crushing began. But as soon as I had done this, the stumbling brown glacier of lumber came to a sharp halt—and the silence was noticeable—until a guy outdoors yelled, “Yeah, stop! I think someone’s inside there! Yeah, put down that china cabinet and take a look will ya!” And when they hacked their way up the densely-packed stairway, I called out to them, and they painstakingly cut me out of there. They brought me back out the way they came, and led me to the guy in charge.
His apology was so long and drawn out that I started dozing in between the more compelling points of his speech, but I made it through to the end reasonably aware of the situation. Turns out, it was all a big mistake. They packed the wrong house.