Read Dave Barry's Homes and Other Black Holes for Free Online

the backseat, and then I’d hit the brakes, and then the cat would scuttle back under the pedal. As you can imagine, this cat and I were the best of friends by the time we arrived at my sister’s apartment, and I only hope that I see it again someday when my hand has healed to the point where I can aim a dart gun.
HOW TO MOVE CHILDREN
    Children are more difficult to move than pets. You can’t just put a child in a crate and stick him on an airplane. God knows I have tried.
    The important thing is preparation. Psychologists stress that you should break the news of the move to the child as soon as possible, ideally at birth. “We’re going to move!” you should shout gaily, the instant the child’s head emerges from the mother. The child will probably cry at this news, but this is normal. Most children are unhappy about moving, which is why it is so important, at each stage in the move preparation process, to sit down with them, one on one, and lie to them.
    “It’s going to be
such
fun!” you should tell them. “You’re going to make
lots
of new friends!”
    Of course this is probably not true. Probably they will wind up in a school where all the really good social cliques have already reached their full membership quotas and have long waiting lists. Probably your children will immediately be branded with lifelongunflattering nicknames such as Goat Booger. But there is no point in telling them this now.

A SMART MOVING IDEA FOR TWO-CAR FAMILIES
    If you’re moving a long distance, you’re probably wondering what’s the best way to get both cars to your new home. One way, of course, is for the wife to drive one car and the husband to drive the other, but this can be lonely and tiring, especially if there are small children, who will of course be clawing foot-long strips of each other’s flesh off before you have pulled out of the driveway. So what modern moving professionals recommend is that you
let the children drive one of the cars
. This way, the adults, in Car A, can relax and talk or listen to classical music, while the children, in Car B, can amuse themselves by playing imaginative highway games such as Death Avengers of the Interstate, and you can all arrive at the motel in a good mood, ready to enjoy a relaxed andhappy evening together until the police come.
MOVING YOUR POSSESSIONS INTO YOUR NEW HOME
    If you are moving yourself, you simply wait for the most humid day in the history of the world, pull your truck up outside your new home, and start carrying your possessions inside. Every hour or so you should take a break, which will give your possessions an opportunity to scurry, giggling, back out to the truck, so that you may carry them inside again.
    If you are using professional movers, the correct procedure is as follows:
You stand in the middle of the living room.
Hundreds of burly, impatient, sweating moving company men come swarming at you from all directions carrying identical brown cardboard boxes, each of whichhas your last name written on it in a helpful manner.
“WHERE DO YOU WANT THIS?” say the burly, impatient men, making it clear by their tone of voice that if you do not answer them within two seconds, they will sweat so hard that they warp your floor.
You pick a room at random. “That goes in the spare bedroom,” you say. Or: “In the dining room, please.” It makes no difference. They will put it wherever they want. Sometimes, for fun, the movers will completely fill up a room, floor to ceiling, with boxes, thus creating a humongous Rubik’s Cube out of your worldly goods, so that to get to any one box, you have to move 1,357 others in exactly the right pattern. I warned you, way back at the beginning of this chapter, that it would be easier to just set fire to everything, but of course you wouldn’t listen.
UNPACKING
    It is best not to attempt this all at once. It is best to space it out over a period of several years, so that you may savor the joy of discovering the kinds of