I can watch movers like the best of them.
I have mastered my watching techniques over time, starting with small ants that I watch as they walk in lines from one side of the concrete to another. I watch them as they carry huge pieces of bread (huge for them) and I watch them as their friends and family assist in the food-moving activity. I do not need magnifying glasses to watch them — my eyesight is superior and it helps me in such voyeurism.
When I mastered the watching of ants moving food particles, I moved up to watching small chipmunks and other tree-dwelling animals corral nuts and berries and move them from the ground up to a hole in a tree. That hole, their home. I have watched them run back and forth across busy freeways and streets, holding the jewels of nutrition in their jaws, and carefully bringing them back to their penthouse in the forest.
After I easily mastered the two previous natural events, I moved on to bigger and better things. I began to watch small dogs and kangaroos (both in different locales) as they buried bones and moved young in their pouches across great distances. Although the dog watching was locally, I have to admit that the kangaroo watching was all done via The Discovery Channel. But even then, I was watching something — television.
My watching techniques have prepared me for this weekend. The weekend in which I would be, for the first time, watching movers instead of moving, myself.
I used to get my friends to help, bribing them with a free lunch at Island’s — a burger joint here in Southern California. I’d say, “Order anything you want off the menu! And free drink refills on me!” It was a simpler time…a time when friends would move your crap simply knowing that when all was said and done they could eat a burger and bloat their intestines with as much fruit punch as they could humanly ingest. But now, I stand alone. Watching three men whom I have never met wrap up my household items and put them into a huge truck that is blocking traffic in the street.
And I am pretty damn good at it.
The key to being the best mover-watcher on the planet is not simply standing around and doing nothing while other people sweat and break their backs. You must, just like you feign work when your boss walks by your desk, use facial expressions to give your new-mover-buddies the impression that you are somehow helping them via your thoughtful comments and animated movements. It does not matter that you are paying them. If you are going to stand around — you must seem like you’re a part of the crew.
Being the best damn mover-watcher on the planet, I will say thoughtful things like, “Man, I couldn’t lift that to save my life!” and “Holy crap buddy, you’re on fire!” and “No wonder you guys are the pros!” and “Look at the guns on you bastards!”. I will raise my eyebrows and hold my chest to communicate how out of breath I am just watching them. I will pretend to slam my fingers in doorjambs just to make them feel as if (although I am paying them to do the job) I am getting worked as well.
It’s a plan I have put into place and it will come to fruition this weekend as I am the best damn mover-watcher on the planet.
It has been said, and it has been so.
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