Yesterday I was helping my friend Dustin move some couches to a summer house his family had bought. While that makes for a better tidbit than story, the real action happened while at his local U-Haul.

First of all, if you are unfamiliar with U-Haul, the business plan is remarkably efficient. They have fleets of big, bulky and for the most part unsteerable trucks that they’re willing to rent to you, the consumer, for reasonable prices in the ballpark of $10 per mile. While that may seem like price gouging to you, I did fail to mention that they throw in a complementary hand truck, just to sweeten the pot a bit. However, I wonder for those poor individuals without hands, what kind of freebie they would be entitled to? That’s another debate for another time.

Getting back to my story, we arrive at our muddy destination, with cash in hand to pick up our glorious chariot. The woman is outside dressed in jeans and a hoodie and tell us that she’s just out there to grab a quick smoke. I’m not sure why it had to be a quick smoke, as I didn’t see another soul there the entire time we were there. For her sake, she could take her time and enjoy “flavor country.” As we walk in behind her, she takes one last drag and does the side exhale, as to avoid getting smoke into her place of business, nice enough for Dustin, who was standing right in back of her soon found himself in a cloud of nicotine and the smell of Prell shampoo, which I’m assuming she may have used. Nice. This woman knows how to handle her clients.

So we stroll in and he goes up to the counter. At this point, I feel the need to play the role of Tony, another of my friends, who in a situation like this will comment aloud about everything hoping for a cheap laugh. So I look through a Homes For Sale magazine and tell how excited I would be to live in this charming house somewhere in downtown Hartford. Sure the chalk outline on the sidewalk is still fresh, but I figure that the sellers would be motivated. I also inquire into the $8 dollar LED key-chain flashlight, which was slightly smaller than a normal Mag light. I think that you shouldn’t be able to put a key ring on anything you’d like, there needs to be some kind of bureaucratic agency that determines what can be labeled a key-chain device. But soon enough my day would soon change. For you see we were driving our load of comfortable couches to Narragansett, RI. We were trying to select a drop off point for the truck when the woman, who for our sake I’ll name Deb, said the following:

“IF I KNOW MY GEOGRAPHY, NARRAGANSETT IS RIGHT NEXT TO THE CAPE” (the Cape meaning, Cape Cod)

First off, if you are fortunate enough to ever hear someone say “If I know my (insert academic topic of choice)” listen up closely. Because this is a tell tale sign that they have little or no knowledge of this topic at all. With that sentence starter, they are subliminally telling you “You might as well ask a bran muffin, cause I don’t have the foggiest damn idea” You will be in for a treat as you watch this person tread into the murky water of complete BS. You never hear a NASA scientist say “If I know my astrophysics, and I do, I believe that the moon has little if no air and may in fact once have been a part of Norway.” If you ever bring your car to a mechanic that says “If I know 2000 Chevy Malibu’s then the reason your car is bucking is directly correlated with the positioning of the cup holder” then you run out of there and never look back. I pity the poor individual wheeled into the ER with a gun shot wound, who overhears their doc say “Nurse, if I know my anatomy, I believe that the there’s a large AND small intestine. You see, most doctors think there is just one, the uni-testine, but if I think I saw on the Discovery Channel that there are in fact 2 of these bad boys snaking around in there.” Confident people don’t say “If I know my.”

Now if you haven’t already Googled it, Narragansett is actually 2 hours away from the Cape. Even Magellan would be hard pressed to say that would entitle her to say “Right Next to.”

The other funny thing to come out of Dustin and Deb’s conversation was that they were talking about how there were people that you could pay to help you load and unload stuff out of the U-Haul truck at your load and drop zones. I wanted to blurt out that in fact these lifting mercenaries do in fact have a title, they’re called “MOVERS!” I’ve seen them before, they were large tan belts that can’t fit in the normal belt loops and they tend to be surly. But of course I shouldn’t expect Deb, who although did not proudly display her diploma, received some sort of advanced Geography degree from a correspondance school or Dustin, who graduated with a 4.0 in UConn’s honors program to know this.

(this group of 80’s college kids, would help you move for $20 or a Duran Duran Cassette)
So with no thanks to Deb we did get the couches moved. Dustin actually hit 80mph in the U-Haul which I swear was going to explode at those speeds. I also ate an entire package of Spree and a Red Bull during the trip too. Just in case you were wondering.

Well, that’s the story. If you made it this far congrats and stay tuned for the TVDeuce Year In Review on Monday!