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comical items you chose to pack and, at great cost in money and effort, move to your new home. You can even make this a traditional nightly family event, with everybody gathering around a packing box and laughing festively as you unwrap 750 square feet of protective wrapping paper to discover, say, the key that operates the radiator of your former home.
WHAT CONDITION THE PREVIOUS OWNERS WILL HAVE LEFT YOUR NEW HOME IN
    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, theywere 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.
GETTING YOUR NEW PHONE, GAS, ELECTRICITY, APPLIANCES, CABLE TELEVISION, AND WATER HOOKED UP
    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 manyof 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!

5
Making New Enemies
    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, youdimly perceive shapes that might be your

    “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