Dave Barry - Homes And Other Black Holes

They will have left it in roughly the same condition as the Visigoths left Rome in. When you open the refrigerator, life-threatening molds will try to grasp you with their tentacles. But do not judge the previous owners too harshly; remember that when they left, they were in the same subhuman, totally amoral moving-induced state of mind that you were in when you moved out of your house without so much as a backward glance at the inch-thick layer of crud that got baked onto the sides of your former oven when the lasagna exploded.

The important thing to understand is that all these things are done by the same person. Yes, homeowners: there is only one Hookup Man in the entire world, sort of like Santa Claus, and as you can imagine, he is very, very busy. This is why, when you call up the telephone company to find out when the Hookup Man will visit your house, they cannot pinpoint the exact time. “Right now,” they will say, “it looks like it will probably be an even-numbered year.” In fact most people have never seen the Hookup Man, and some say he is only a legend. But many of us believe in him, because we have seen the jolly pranks and tricks he likes to play, our favorite being the one where we have been waiting for him in our house for days, and finally we must go out for food, and the instant we are gone he comes bounding out of the bushes, where he has been hiding, and leaves a cheerful note on our door that says: “Sorry We Missed You!” Ha ha! Such a card, that Hookup Man!

Probably the most important thing, in settling into a new home, is to establish good relationships with your neighbors. The reason for this is best summarized by the moving words of the famous English poet John Donne, who wrote:

No man is an island unto his own personal self,Each man is more of a subcontinent, So never send to ask for whom the doorbell tolls Because more than likely it is your neighbor Come to see if you have a plumber’s snake he can borrow So he can attempt to unclog the hall toilet Which he suspects his son has flushed His daughter’s Rainbow Brite doll down.

Idealistic? Sure it is, but it still has meaning today. We live in a complex, interconnected society, and sometimes we must call upon our neighbors to help us, to stand by us, to comfort us, or at very least to try not to back their recreational vehicle into our jacuzzi. So as soon as you get to your new home, you want to Reach Out. You want to march right next door, put on your very nicest smile, ring the doorbell, and ...

BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK

Well! It looks as though your new neighbors have a doggy! A very alert doggy! A doggy with jaws the size of an important geological formation! In the background, you dimly perceive shapes that might be your new neighbors.

“Hi!” you say. “We’re your new ...”

BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK

“BE QUIET, LAMONT!!” say your new neighbors. It sounds like there might be several of them.

“Anyway,” you say, “we thought we’d stop by and ...”

BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK

“DAMMIT, LAMONT!!” say your new neighbors.

“Well, okay!” you say. “Guess we’d better get back and ...”

BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK

They seem like nice people.

Now that you’ve met the neighbors, it’s time to start locating some of the “necessities of life.” If you have small children, you need to find a Pediatric Group where you can go and sit in the waiting room when your children get their ears infected, which is approximately four times per child per week.

Notice I say “Pediatric Group,” not “Pediatrician.” There are no longer any Lone Ranger-style pediatricians, because it is considered a serious violation of modern medical ethics for a child to see the same doctor twice during the child’s lifetime. This is why you sometimes must wait so long in the waiting room: The Pediatric Group is flying in a new doctor, sometimes from as far away as Malaysia, solely to avoid having your child see a familiar face. This is also why, in selecting a new Pediatric Group, the most important factor is not the doctors, but the person who answers the phone, because you will spend a large portion of your life talking with this person:

PHONE PERSON: Good afternoon, this is Pediatricians Backwards “R” Us; how may we help you?

YOU: Hi, this is Mrs. Evans, and my son, Thad, has been having these kind of strange-shaped bowel movements, and last time this happened we saw Dr. Wexler, and he said if it happened again we should call and ...

PHONE PERSON: Well, of course you realize you can’t see Dr. Wexler ever again.

YOU: Yes, of course, but I was wondering if maybe Dr. Bunderson ...

PHONE PERSON (suspiciously): How do you know Dr. Bunderson? Have you seen him before?

YOU (quickly): No! No! Really! I just heard of him, that’s all. From a friend.

PHONE PERSON: Well, in that case, please hold.

eighteen-minute pause

PHONE PERSON: Dr. Bunderson wants to know what you mean by “strange-shaped.”

YOU: Well, kind of like M & M’s.

PHONE PERSON: Please hold.

twenty-three-minute pause

PHONE PERSON: Plain or peanut?

YOU: Plain. Shall I hold?

PHONE PERSON: Of course.

Forty-nine-minute pause

PHONE PERSON: Dr. Bunderson wants you to bring Thad in and sit in the waiting room for two hours reading books with names like Billy the Bunny Bumps His Nose and listening to children shriek behind closed doors, after which Dr. Bunderson will see you for slightly under a minute and a half and prescribe a medicine that you have to administer anally when your child is sleeping and that costs as much per ounce as a round-trip Concorde ticket to Paris, France.

YOU (gratefully): Thank you.

Important as it is to find a Pediatric Group, it is not the most important task, because it is merely a matter of life and death which means it pales by comparison with the task of ...

This has become very difficult in recent years, because most gas stations have switched over to being “convenience” stores, meaning that, in addition to gas, they sell food such as bologna sandwiches created right around the time of the Big Bang. But they do not fix cars. You pull into a modern gas station with an actual car problem, and odds are that the cashier, sitting behind the bulletproof glass watching MTV, will have the police come and arrest you for blocking the access of legitimate customers wishing to purchase Slimjims, cheap sunglasses, and TicTac breath mints.

The reason gas stations sell food, of course, is that the supermarkets are busy cashing checks. The supermarkets have to cash checks because the banks are busy mailing unsolicited credit cards to everybody in the Western Hemisphere. The result is that very few people fix cars.

The best way to select a new mechanic is to conduct a little competence test, wherein you deliberately disconnect one spark plug wire from your car’s engine. Then you go around to various gas stations, tell the attendants that you think something is wrong with your engine, and see if they can correctly diagnose the problem.