The Doctor and the Colonel

As I’ve stated in previous posts, what to me was last Sunday, the 17^th was moving day. To say it went horribly would be a gross understatement. Do you remember when you were a little kid and you’d hear or read the old parables like “The Little Engine That Could” and “The Ant and the Grasshopper” and shit like that? Well, that second one is kind of how my move went.

While the Ant was working slow and steady throwing shit into his anthill for the long cold winter that everyone KNEW was coming, the Grasshopper was sitting around under a tree all summer playing a banjo and being a lazy dickhead. When the Grasshopper saw the Ant was moving all this crap for winter he just asked “Dude, what’s the rush? winter is, like, MONTHS away!” But the Ant just kept on working a little here and a little there, and eventually the snow fell and the Grasshopper FREAKED out since all he had done was do bong hits under the shade tree with his banjo and throw empty beer cans at the Ant while he moved little bits of cornbread into his anthill for the cold. The Grasshopper came knocking on the Anthill and you probably know the rest of the story. Ant helps the Grasshopper, the Grasshopper learns his lesson, and they become Best Friends Forever. The End.

For the past month and a half or so I’ve been packing a little here or there. A day off meant maybe an hour or so of packing. Get off work early; throw some shit in a box. Like cornbread to the motherfucking anthill. The Doctor was the Ant. I knew winter was coming and did what I had to do. On the other hand, the Colonel thought it was a more productive use of his time to get drunk. Memorial Day weekend where he had 3 days off in a row and less than a month to get all his earthly belongings packed for moving day. And pack he did. He packed four boxes of VHS tapes before he passed out under the shady tree with his banjo with an empty bottle of hobo grade vodka. And that’s pretty much how his weekends were spent while I was packing up stuff like pots and pans and towels.

Then came last weekend: his absolute LAST final chance to pack all his stuff. And on Saturday he was busy packing up 110 years worth of paperwork that he filed in random order in the filing cabinet. He was off to a good start. Lex and I went to see a comedy show at around 6 and before I left I thought “wow….Colonel Grasshopper might just make it!” Not even close. When I got home at 11 he was passed out in the chair, papers at his feet betraying that he cannonballed into a bottle the very moment I had left the house. “Fuck this noise, I’m going to bed” I said as I shut the lights off. “Tomorrow should be interesting….” I thought, as slight banjo music faded the screen to black.

Sunday morning came and Colonel Bruce woke up early. 6:30 came and he was awake, showered and ready to pack. And to pack you need a good hearty meal. For breakfast he decided to have a bagel and an inhuman quantity of vodka as a side dish. I woke up at 8:30 to get a shower and eat and he was passed out in the chair. “Wake up you dopey old fuck! It’s moving day!” I screamed at him as I gave him the open handed slap of shame. “I’m jumping in the shower, you start to pack” I said. He just nodded all sleepy eyed and stood up as the room tilted around him. Refreshed from my shower I got dressed and went to look in on his progress. To my complete lack of surprise, he was still shirtless and asleep in the chair, like a little drunken angel. This time it was two slaps and a punch to the gut. And lots more harsh words. He awoke with a start, expecting pink elephants and sleep pixies to be flooding the room. No such luck. Just his son, yelling about moving day and wondering aloud if he’d packed the shovel.

The moving crew that the Colonel had somehow wrangled showed up and started to work. Packing all his knickknacks into unlabeled boxes and throwing them onto a truck, Bruce standing around smoking and leaning on stuff trying not to fall over. It was a system that worked until around 3. “How to get the couch out of the living room?” was the question at hand. We decided to think that over with a short break. During the break the Old Man went fucking batshit crazy. “If you’re not going to fucking work, you can all fucking leave! Standing around with your hands in your goddamn pockets! There’s work to be done!!!!” he bellowed as he tried to move a refrigerator on his own. Now keep in mind he had done all of 15 minutes worth of actual moving work over the past month. And now Captain Morgan is screaming at people like the drunken asshole that he is. They shot me a look of pity and said “fine…..well just leave then.” I muttered my thanks and apologies. One of the Old Man’s friends stayed to help me load the truck and then he got out of there.

I drove the truck to the storage place. The Colonel sat next to me and drank his beer the whole way. That’s right: he brought a beer with him for the half mile trip down to the storage place. All that AND I had the pleasure of unloading a very full truck with a drunk. Spectacular! All I have to say is he nearly died. Not from moving stuff wrong, or dropping furniture off the truck, though those both happened. No he nearly died from my hands. It nearly came to fisticuffs. But since I didn’t want to unload all his shit AND work out funeral arrangements, I decided to just do what comes natural: mock him. And a verbal lashing he did receive! He was near tears as he screamed “quit picking on meeeeeee!” Seriously, he said that. Like I was an older boy on the playground and I had mocked his Velcro shoes and hit him with a kickball. My mission was complete for the day: make a drunken old man regress to a small frightened boy due to my verbal beating. Oh yes….Evil is a good feeling.

So we get back to the house and I call The Jim to come help move the rest of the stuff to the garage since the storage shed was full and we still had another truckload or so. Bruce disinfects wounds I’ve given his psyche by pouring alcohol down his throat. The Jim shows up and we bust ass as I mock and he suggests the Colonel and the Doctor take this on the road as an “Odd Couple type sitcom”. We get stuff squared away enough for Drunken Grasshopper to finish it later in the week, and Jim and I get ready to take the U-Haul back before I head to Carrolton for my Jedi Exile. The Old Man makes some calls that The Jim suggests are to the dial tone and I laugh for the first time since the comedy show the night before. We jump in the truck and Colonel Drunkard puts a bottle in one pocket, a pistol in the other, tosses a change of clothes in the trunk of his car and drives off into the sunset to crash at his lady-friends house. We sit there in the truck in awe. “Did that just really happen?” I ask. How many things are completely wrong with what we just saw happen?!? He’s been drinking since 6:30 IN THE MORNING, has an open container and a PISTOL in his POCKET!!!! That’s like an automatic douche with pepper spray or jolt from a Tazer. “Your pops is SO going to be on COPS next week, Robinso” said The Jim “and suddenly I feel MUCH better about my life.” “Me too….I needs to put that on a poster and sell it to high school guidance counselors or something. Well let’s take that truck back, Chewy” I said as I shook my head and punched it.

Thanks for reading, but that’s it for now, kids.

Dr. Robinson