Posted by kid47 on December 14, 2004, at 14:17:26
My sis is director for a charity that helps moms with problems...drug addiction, abusive relationships....pretty much women with kids who are stuck in some horrific set of circumstances and can't find a way out.
Part of this help with problem solving involves getting these fragmented families a decent place to live. The charity has a HUGE warehouse stuffed with every imaginable item you might suspect necessary to start a household from scratch. Some brand new or gently worn, this mostly donated collection of goods is stacked to the rafters. Since I have recently found myself with a whole lotta free time, and I am now banned from spending it in pretty much every saloon within a fifty mile radius, I told sister (we affectionately call her "the General") to let me know if she ever needs any help moving stuff or whatever....ya know I figured it could be considered a selfless and even altruistic gesture, plus it might be a good way to meet chicks. I found out that if you volunteer for "General Sister" you had better be prepared for instantaneous acceptance of your offer. So that very day I found myself wandering through the warehouse maze of household goods. The General barked specific instructions of which dinning table and chairs or what particular set of dishes were to be loaded on the truck for transportation to some deserving souls soon to be living quarters and hopefully a leg up to a much better life for them. There were at least two dozen easily accesable couches to choose from and of course the one General Sis insisted on for this particular client was buried beneath twenty thousand (at least) boxes of several unknown entities and a whole lotta crates of paper clips. Who knew paper clips would be such a popular item. So after a hard fought battle George (another hapless volunteer) and I unearthed the "oh she is gonna absoulutely love this.....the color will go perfectly with the carpet and there are some gorgeous accent pillows....see waaay up on the tippy top of that pallet shelf that will be wooonderful" couch. It was of course a fold out couch that weighed only slightly more than my car. So George and I dutifully schleped this behemeth out to the truck. At this point I should probably mention that like many warehouses this one has a bit of a rodent problem. That might be an important fact to recall later in the story. Sooo...with an entourage of two pickup trucks a van and several cars we paraded a short distance to the apartment house where we would deposit the various tables, chairs, dressers, etc. and one very big, and I believe concrete reinforced, couch. After only a little trouble we had every thing unloaded and placed in the general vicinity of what turned out to be a third floor apartment. The only item left was...and you already guessed it...the couch. After much discussion and careful planning, it was decided, by the General of course, that the most expeditious way to get the couch from the ground to its final resting place on the third floor, would be to use the outside stairway generally reserved for escaping the building in the event of a fire. (I guess we could just and shall here after call it the fire escape). So that being decided, George and I and a couple of other volunteers began to saunter away from the area of activity to hopefully find a place to hide....I mean rest, and allow the somewhat younger and possibly only a bit more athletic frat boys to deal with the couch. Unfortunately the frat boys, with only slightly quicker minds than George and I, had already left. As we began the ascent up the rusty slightly rickety fire escape, George and I were still trying to figure out how we ended up in this predicament. The remaining volunteers were cheering us on, shouting ever so helpful advice to be careful and to watch our step when something no one nowhere could ever have predicted, happened. While I was supporting the "high" side of the couch and poor ol George supporting down below, a rodent, nay lets call a spade a spade, a rat....a rat the size of...of.....a basketball...or possibly a small German Shepard, decided he'd had enough of this wild ride snuggled up in the comfy, cozy, confines of the couch and jumped ship....directly onto George.
George, being more than just a little startled by this, immediately and I mean immediately decided to let go of his end of the couch. This obviously became a bit of an inconvenience to myself, as now it was basically and totally up to me to keep the couch from careening back down the fire escape. I didn't want the couch damaged and there was a pretty good possibility if the couch fell it would kill or mame George. So with my prioroties in order I used every ounce of strength (I workout you know) to keep the couch from toppling down. Just when I thought I had the situation under control, and George wasn't screamimg quite so much, a second and even larger rat emerged from my end of the couch. I am not skitish about critters of any kind....but....when a grey ball of fur comes unexpectedly hurtling toward your face it can be distracting. I, of course, calmly released my end of the couch to attend to the offending creature, which naturally allowed the couch, only obeying the laws of physics, to begin to descend the stairway in less than an orderly fashion! Georges screaming once again hit a fever pitch as he just managed to avoid being crushed by this runaway monster. There was a somewhat panicked "ooooh" from the observing volunteers, then a stunned hush as we watched the couch execute several end over end manuvers before finally deciding to flip over the railing and make a bee line for the ground. I wish I could say the couch survived unscathed this spectacular demonstartion of gravity at its best, but unfortunately it was more than just a little damaged. It is now sitting comfortably in my sparsley furnished apartment after being certified as rodent free and of course completely disinfected. The couch and I are truly a fit. Although both are pretty badly damaged we overlook each others defects and try and focus on the positive....and strangely I have not been called on to do anymore furniture moving.....but I am now in charge of putting the peanut butter in the rat traps.Have a perfect day
kid
poster:kid47
thread:429517
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20041209/msgs/429517.html