A Moving Story

My next door neighbors, lovely people, decided to move back to Sweden. In fact, they've already left. Yesterday the movers came to pack up their house.

Instead of doing the logical thing and parking in front of my neighbors' house, as you might expect, since it was my neighbors who were moving, the movers parked a truck the size of an apartment building in front of my house.

That sucker was one huge moving van, the kind that can carry two houses' worth of stuff. In fact, it was so long that its back end butted up to the edge of my lawn on one side while the front end extended several yards past my driveway on the other side.

Needless to say my driveway was completely blocked. So was my car, which was sitting in my driveway.

Meanwhile there was nothing parked in front of my neighbors' house. Their driveway wasn't blocked. Nor were there any cars parked in it.

None of the movers bothered to see if I was home. No one bothered to ring my doorbell to ask if I had an opinion about having a moving van parked across the front of my property, blocking my driveway.

Assheads.

I came out of my house, got in my car, backed it up until it was almost touching the van and prepared to honk my horn, but one of the movers saw me before I started blasting away.

I got out of my car and made the universal gesture that says, "What the f*ck are you doing blocking my driveway?"

"Oh, sorry."

The three movers stopped loading the van, set their boxes down and removed the ramps they were using to load my neighbors' stuff. This took some time.

As I started to get back into my car, one of the movers came over to drive the van out of the way so I could get out of my driveway. This meant driving almost three houses down, the thing was so long.

Climbing into the cab of the truck he turned to me shouted, "Just honk when you come back and we'll let you back in."

That's when I had to make a split second decision. Stay and fight, or just leave. My whole body was ready for confrontation. "Whaddya mean YOU'LL let me back into MY driveway? YOU'RE going to MOVE that frigging van now and block somebody else's driveway."

But the fight I was born to start, the argument that was just itching to be had, the persuasive language I was longing to use, the toe to toe I was dying to participate in, never took place. Mrs. Linklater stepped away from the moment.

Here's the part you might not understand. How could Mrs. Linklater just give up? Easy. I had to be downtown for work and I was running late. I also knew that I wouldn't be back until late. So having a moving van parked in front of my house, aside from being annoying, wasn't that big a deal, since I wasn't going to be around anyway. Quelle disappointment.

So instead of telling the movers to back up their freaking moving van from the front of my house to the front of my neighbors' house or I'd call the cops [who, I just know, would love to drop whatever they were doing to take care of my problem], I didn't say anything.

I even passed up a chance to ask them why they decided that it was okay to block MY driveway in the first place, but, I really had to go.

So I just got in my car and left, disappointed more than anyone will know that I had to pass up such a wonderful opportunity to prove that women over sixty who live alone can still play the bitch card.