Pat Craig: A moving experience, with some assembly required

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Aug 25, 2008 | by Pat Craig

Throughout most of my youth, I looked like a big, dumb strong guy.

Thinking about it, I probably just looked like a big, dumb guy, and people threw in the strong part as flattery.

They needed to, because more often than not, they mentioned my strength and then in the very next breath they asked me if I'd help them move.

It was sort of a rite of passage, the moving stuff -- part of growing up and getting out.

But I always got invited: "Hey, I'm starting Davis in September, I'll tell that big, dumb guy he's strong, and he'll help me move."

And, sure enough, I'd be out there trying to find a way to cram 18 or 20 years' worth of stuff into a trailer the size of a picnic basket.

Usually I said I'd help as sort of a quid pro quo deal -- I more or less figured that when it came my turn to move, I'd have dozens of people eager to help me as a sort of payback. What I didn't consider was that by the time it was my turn, everybody else had already moved, so there was nobody to ask.

Aside from fundamental laziness, I don't know why I'm so averse to helping friends move -- jealousy, perhaps. But I do know the one thing that made me happiest about getting older is nobody asks me to help them move anymore.

My streak of not schlepping stereos and boxes of books ended a couple of weeks ago when my son moved to Oregon and asked me if I'd like to come along. He was smart enough not to ask me directly if I'd help him move.

But figuring a good offense is the best defense, I told him straight out I wouldn't help. "I'd love to, of course," I said. "But I have a bad back, bad feet, trick fingers, sore arms, a headache and dandruff that would get all over your clothes if I even thought about helping."

He told me he didn't need any help, that he could easily carry all the stuff up one flight of stairs to his new apartment. All he'd really want me to do was maybe help put together some of the furniture he was planning to buy at Ikea.

That was like offering me an 18-year-old bottle of single-malt. Well, no it wasn't, but as much as I hate moving, I love putting stuff together.

When he was little, my son had more bikes and Big Wheels than anyone could use, because I liked putting them together so much.

If I ever get a tattoo, it'll be a picture of crossed screwdrivers with "Some assembly required" written at the bottom.

So all the way up to the northern end of the Beaver State, I kept thinking of stuff we could buy to put together. And if you know Ikea even a little bit, you know it has every possible piece of furniture you could imagine -- all with names like Ingo, Olav and Bob, and all in need of putting together.

By the time we left Portland, the car was filled with impossibly tiny boxes claiming to contain couches, bookshelves, chairs, desks and tables of all kinds, all in hundreds of pieces waiting to be assembled.

So, my son dragged the stuff upstairs and I assembled, or tried to translate the pictographic instructions and figure out how to use the specialized tiny tools that came with each piece of furniture.

While the furniture is full-sized, the pieces are designed to be assembled by elves, who can wrap their tiny hands around the odd wrenches and hex drivers to get huge amounts of torque on the tools. I, on the other hand, have big, fat hands, so when I grasp the tools, I get cuts on my hands and blood on the tools. By the time we got everything together, I had a total of 17 Band-Aids on my wrench- and-hex hands and a certificate from the Columbia River Gorge Blood Bank saying I had donated two-and-a-half pints to the carpet.

But it all came together, the pain subsided, and I'm ready to assemble more stuff.

Before I do, though, I'm going to see if Ikea has a boys' husky tool department.

Reach Pat Craig at pcraig@bayareanewsgroup.com.