(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 11/1/2013)
The moving van is gone, and with it our neighbors of the past five years. Nice kids, those. I don’t use that term pejoratively, but from my elevated chronological perspective, anyone with a four-year-old and a two-year-old is a kids.
Actual age is, sometimes, difficult to determine by looking. A friend who has been hanging around since the mid-1970s reminded me the other day he’s 57. I didn’t think he was that old. I knew it, on some level, but I didn’t think it. I’m older than that, except when I’m walking around, hiking up Pole Steeple, or motorcycle riding.
I hate moving, even more than I hate buying a new car – or even borrowing my wife’s minivan – and for much the same reason. It’s not that I don’t want to be where I’m going. It’s just that I have put considerable effort into becoming comfortable, and moving all that stuff from where I’ve been is, well, a bother.