aqumada

By Wegesha

It just occurred to me that I have been on a regular "moving" schedule. Unbeknown to me, it looks like the gods long ago conspired to have me relocate once in every decade. And so, I started from the toughest of relocations in the first decade of life when I refused to renew my lease for the single room, rent-free womb I had occupied for 9 months. Being that crammed had never really been my style and to top it off, the owner detested the type of loud, jammin' music I loved. After I left, that room remained vacant for about 12 years before a courageous young lad moved in only to vacate it 9 months later like I did. What can I say? It has become a cliché to state "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Anyway, home became the American mid west in the second decade of life, the east cost in the third decade and now, during the beginning of the fourth decade I am taking up residence in another mid west state.

I am always amazed to read "moving" being listed as one of the stressful things in life. I beg to differ. The way I do it, moving barely qualifies as a minor inconvenience, mostly due to my limited worldly possessions. The last time I moved, I had 4 pieces of luggage in excess of the 2 per person allowed but all it took for the pieces to get to their final destination was the $60 I had accidentally placed with my ticket at the airport curb-side check-in. How I miss the good old days of pre 9/11 flights.

The pieces of luggage that will accompany my move this time around miraculously remain the same but somehow the loose ends I have to tie up here and there are pushing the stress-o-meter past the level of "extremely mild" where it had remained during all my past moving experiences. One thing that has become responsible for this mental strain is my newly acquired fondness for owning property. Considering the number of years I will have to stay at my new location (a minimum of 7 years but quite possibly 9), buying a house doesn't seem such a bad idea after all. I am sure the banks won't see it the way I do once they get a hold of my loan application.

We all instinctively know numbers lose meaning at a certain point. As it was well argued on national public radio recently, a news report telling a story about how 12 people died in a mining accident probably carries the same impact to a listener as a story about a natural disaster where 100,000 lives perished. If you are lucky enough to find yourself in my shoes, you may appreciate the significance of that argument. I remember how pensive I was when I took out my first loan in the amount of a measly $10,000. I obsessed over it for an entire semester and each dollar I spent reminded me of how much more in debt I was putting myself in. Nine years after that initial flirtation with the one directional money exchange system of capitalism, the word debt has lost all its meaning.

Before relocating to my new job I had to take care of some grueling paper work which included accounting for every single penny I ever borrowed in the name of education. No more in a pensive mood, I sat stretched out as the accountant flipped through the pages that had names of borrowers arranged in increasing amounts of debt. There, on that last page, with 6 names listed below it, he found my name next to an amount that read $175, 000. Fortunately for me, numbers had lost meaning after the first $30,000 and it would have saved the accountant at least one question if he had just realized that fact. But to his dismay, he went ahead and asked if I had consolidated my loans last year.

"Should I have?" I asked in my impossible-to-hide voice of disinterest.

"It doesn't take a brain surgeon to know you should have consolidated at a 2.7% interest rate last year" he shot back and put my usually loose-lipped mouth in check only to notice the buffoon smile that had started to sparkle on my face at that very moment.

I once read a book by the famous comedian, Jerry Sienfeld, in which he mentioned the ridiculousness of enforcing the helmet law for motorcycle riders. He asserted that it was beyond silly to pass a helmet law to force people to wear a helmet in order to protect a head which is not smart enough in the first place to figure out it needs protection when riding a death-trap contraption at 60 mph. Well said Jerry! Well said! I wonder if I can do half as good a job as you.

Check 1, check 1, mic check 1 2 3 ....

"Mr. accountant, was it not really buffoonish to spend $175,000 in educating, shaping, and molding this slacker only to have him end up treating the one body part many have argued he lacks?" Well, if you ever come across this blog site you will know why I had that smile until I left your office.