by Dave Barry
Assuming that you come up with the correct answers (“yes”) to these questions, your mortgage application will be sent on to the Committee to Hold Up All the Mortgage Applications for Several Months. This will give you time to practice signing checks in preparation for the Ritual Closing Ceremony.
THE RITUAL CLOSING CEREMONY
This is an important and highly traditional part of the home-buying process, the last major hurdle you must clear before you become an Official Homeowner. It is comparable to the initiation ceremonies at major college fraternities, where, to prove that he is worthy of the privileges and responsibilities of membership, the pledge must perform some feat such as attending a Papal Mass wearing only a softball glove.
Essentially, what you must do, in the Ritual Closing Ceremony, is go into a small room and write large checks to total strangers. According to tradition, anybody may ask you for a check, for any amount, and you may not refuse. Once you get started handing out money, the good news will travel quickly through the real estate community via joyful shouts: “A Closing Ceremony is taking place!” Soon there will be a huge horde of people—lawyers, bankers, brokers, insurance people, termite inspectors, caterers, photographers, people you used to know in high school—crowding into the closing room and spilling out into the street. You may be forced to hurl batches of signed blank checks out the window, just to make sure that everyone is accommodated in the traditional way.
Another ritual task you must perform during the Closing Ceremony is frown with feigned comprehension at various unintelligible documents that will be placed in front of you by random individuals wearing suits:
RANDOM INDIVIDUAL: Now, as you can see, this is the Declaration of your Net Interest Accrual Payments of Debenture.
YOU (frowning): Yes.
RANDOM INDIVIDUAL: And this is the Notification of your Pro Rata Indemnities of Assumption.
YOU: Certainly.
RANDOM INDIVIDUAL: And this is the digestive system of a badger.
YOU: Of course.
Once the various officials present are satisfied that you truly wish to become a homeowner and have no checks left, they will award you a mortgage, which will spell out your new duties and obligations in standard legal terminology.
Mortgage
Hear ye, hear ye, everybody listen up because the MORTGAGOR, hereinafter referred to as the MORTGAGEE, has, by duly picking up this piece of paper and putting his JOHN HANCOCK thereontofore, committed himself and his family and his distant relatives and unborn children and domesticated animals body and soul to the terms and conditions of this MORTGAGE, whether these terms and conditions are actually stated right here in print on the MORTGAGE or exist only in the form of vague concepts in the minds of LAWYERS working for the BANK, to wit:
The money has to BE THERE on the first of the month, rain or shine.
If the money is not THERE, the BANK is going to get VERY ANGRY.
The BANK is going to want to GET EVEN.
The BANK is going to make SOMEBODY wish he was naked and tied down spread-eagle on an anthill with ants eating his EYEBALLS because that would be a lot more pleasant than what the BANK has in mind IF THE MONEY IS NOT THERE.
Specifically, the BANK is going to get a pair of NUMBER SIX KNITTING NEEDLES and heat them up to 11,000 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT, and then the BANK is going to …
And so it continues, in technical legalistic detail. It’s really nothing to concern yourself about. The important thing is: at last you’re a homeowner. Now you can immerse yourself in the many rewarding and traditional activities that new homeowners engage in, such as trying to figure out how to make the mortgage payment and, simultaneously, not starve to death.
BUDGET MEALS FOR NEW HOMEOWNERS
Dixie Cups Filled with Sugar
This easy-to-prepare meal is not only economical, but also extremely popular with children, who find it gives them that “extra energy” boost they sometimes need to stay awake for six days in a row.
Wedding Reception Food
If you go to any major hotel or country club on a weekend, chances are you’ll find a large formal wedding reception going on, featuring serving people walking around and actually giving away teeny little sandwiches with the crust cut off. This is an excellent source of food for you, the new homeowner. You just walk in there, looking like you are a close personal friend of either the bride or the groom, and help yourself to as many trays as you feel you will need during this particular mortgage payment period. To keep people from getting suspicious, you should stop from time to time and remark aloud, in a natural tone of voice: “I am a close personal friend of the bride! Or the groom!”
This technique also works at funeral receptions (“I am very sorry that the deceased is dead!”).
But enough about food. Because before we can worry about paying for our house, we have to move into it and start finding out what’s wrong with it. My guess is, plenty.
4
Moving:
A Common Mistake
I, personally, have never given birth to a child, but I have seen it dramatized a number of times on television, and I would say that in terms of pain, childbirth does not hold a candle to moving. For one thing, childbirth has a definite end to it. The baby comes out, looking like a vaseline-smeared ferret, and the parents get to beam at it joyfully, and that is that. Whereas the average move goes on forever. You take Couple A, who just had a baby, and Couple B, who just moved their household, and if you keep track of them, you’ll find that years from now, when Couple A’s baby has grown up, left home, and started a family, Couple B will still be rooting through boxes full of wadded-up newspaper, looking for the lid to their Mr. Coffee. Also, during childbirth, when things go wrong, trained professionals give you powerful drugs. Nobody is ever this thoughtful during a move.
This is why my Number One piece of helpful advice to people who are about to move, especially for the first time, is always:
DON’T DO IT! SET FIRE TO YOUR HOUSEHOLD GOODS RIGHT NOW AND JUST WALK AWAY FROM THEM WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A BACKWARD GLANCE! THIS WILL BE EASIER, IN THE LONG RUN!
Of course you think I’m just kidding, and by the time you realize I’m not, you’ll already be in your new home, trying unsuccessfully to locate something to slash your wrists with. So we might as well get started.
First off, you need to make an important decision: Are you going to move yourself with the help of friends who have been drinking too much beer, or are you going to hire surly, incompetent professionals? The answer most likely depends on whether or not you, personally, have to pay for it. Many times, large corporations will pay for moving expenses, so you might ask them, although usually their policy is to do this only for their own employees.
PROFESSIONAL MOVERS: HOW TO GET YOUR POSSESSIONS BACK
The big advantage of going with professional movers, of course, is that you have somebody to complain to when you get to your new home and discover that your fine china has been reduced to Chiclet-size pieces and there is mayonnaise in the piano. Also, if it’s a full-service move, you get to watch the Packing People in action. These are moving company workers who go through your house scooping up everything they see and putting it into a box. Everything. The Packing People do not ask questions. They will cheerfully pack an entire box with used Kitty Litter, painstakingly wrapping each individual cat doot in specialized paper so it will not be damaged in shipment. Thus it is very important to keep a sharp eye on the Packing People while they are at work, so as to avoid painful tragedies. (“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH JENNIFER?”)
Another problem that sometimes arises with professional movers is getting them to give you your furniture back once they put it in the van. This problem is especially serious if the driver, after he puts your stuff in his van, goes around and picks up several other households full of stuff, which he then has to drop off, usually in Zaire, before he can go to your new home. The solution to this problem is to do what savvy moving families have been doing for years: hijack the truc
k. Get a gun, and simply demand that the driver unload at your house first. Of course this means you’ll wind up with somebody else’s possessions, but it doesn’t really matter. You’ll never get them unpacked anyway.
MOVING YOURSELF
The big advantage of moving yourself is that you get to rent a rental truck. Rental trucks are highly specialized vehicles that are not released for use by the general public until they have undergone an intensive “breaking-in” program of being used to carry violent cattle with severe intestinal disorders over rough terrain for a minimum of 1,700,000 miles without maintenance.
These machines are capable of traveling the length of several football fields on a single tankful of gas, yet they boast the kind of cornering, braking, and acceleration characteristics normally associated with municipal stadiums. No question about it: Once you get behind the wheel of a rental truck, you’ll wonder what the sticky substance on the seat is. But before you’re ready to think about the truck, you need to go through all your possessions and make a serious futile effort to get rid of them. A key element in this effort is …
THE GARAGE SALE
A garage sale is basically when strangers come to your house and examine your personal belongings with undisguised contempt.
The first ones you’ll meet will be the garage sale Regulars. Garage sales are their lives. They’ll show up at your home early, generally about two days before the sale is scheduled to begin. The way they find out about it is, they use computers to examine satellite reconnaissance photographs of suburban neighborhoods for signs of incipient garage sale activity, such as people standing around arguing about how much to charge for a 1953 set of the Encyclopedia Britannica that’s missing volume 18 (Saliva-Tapeworm).
How do you price all those treasured personal belongings? The truth is, it doesn’t matter what you charge, because the Regulars aren’t going to pay it. These are people who do not own a single possession, including furniture, that they paid more than $2.50 for, and they are not about to change their policy for the likes of you.
GARAGE SALE REGULAR (picking Up a Sale object): What’s this?
YOU: That’s my grandmother’s brooch. It’s twenty-four-carat gold, it has eight flawless diamonds, and these are real pearls in the center here. It was presented to my grandmother personally by the King of England, whose crest is on the back.
GARAGE SALE REGULAR: I’ll give you a dollar for it.
The Regulars will quickly pick you clean of everything that anybody might want to buy, so when your sale actually gets under way, it will consist of people getting out of their cars, examining your possessions the way you might view an unexpected leech in your pasta, then asking you: “Is this it?” The only thing they’ll be interested in buying is anything on which you have carefully placed a large sign stating: NOT FOR SALE. They’ll walk up, read the sign carefully, then ask you: “Is this for sale?”
It can make you feel vaguely inadequate, watching people reject your possessions. At least that’s how it affects me. I find myself wanting to please these people. I want to say, “If you don’t see what you like, we’ll order it!” But of course this tends to defeat the whole purpose of the garage sale, so the best thing to do is just sit there grimly until the sale is over and you can throw everything away.
Okay, now that we’ve cleared out some of the dead wood, it’s time to proceed with the next step in the moving process, which is …
GETTING A BUNCH OF EMPTY LIQUOR BOXES AND HURLING THINGS INTO THEM AT RANDOM
You won’t start out this way, of course. You’ll start by selecting the objects with great care and wrapping them up very gently. You’ll keep this up for a week or so, packing box after box, making regular trips for more, getting to be good buddies with the clerks at the liquor store, getting a satisfied feeling when you gaze upon the big stacks of filled boxes in the living room. And then one day you’ll look around and make a chilling discovery: You’re not making any progress. There’s still just as much stuff lying around unboxed as there was the day you started. There might even be more. And so you start to pack with less care, faster and faster, until you find yourself in an uncontrolled packing frenzy, throwing everything—dirt, money, deceased spiders—into liquor boxes in a desperate effort to empty the house.
What you are up against here is a strange phenomenon that has astounded scientists and liquor store clerks for thousands of years: It is impossible to empty a house. You can’t do it. Somehow, word that you’re moving gets out to all the dumps and garbage disposal sites, and in the dead of the night there comes an eerie rustling sound as all your old possessions, the ones you threw away years ago—broken appliances, coffee grounds, Pat Boone records—rise up and come limping and scuttling back to your house, where they nestle in the backs of your closets, waiting to spring out at you the way Tony Perkins kept springing out at people in Psycho, only more unexpectedly. If you throw them away again, they’ll crawl right back the next night. Eventually you’ll lose your sanity, and you’ll start deciding to keep them. “This looks like it’s in pretty good shape!” you’ll say, holding up the owner’s manual to the Chevrolet station wagon that you sold in 1972. And all the other old possessions, back in their closets, writhe with joy, because they know there is hope for them.
This is how deranged you can become: The last time we moved, I had to physically restrain my wife from packing several scum-encrusted rags that I had been using to clean toilets. It was also my wife who decided to keep the greenish chair that looks like what would happen if a monstrous prehistoric creature blew its nose in our living room. We had remarked many times before that all the pain and anguish of moving would be justified by the fact that we would be leaving this chair behind forever. It broke into open laughter when it was carried into our new home.
HELPFUL PACKING HINTS:
After packing a box, always write your name on the top (e.g., “Barry”), so when you get to your new home you’ll be able to tell at a glance what your name is.
Tropical fish should be individually wadded up in newspaper.
In fact, it’s a good idea to pack several boxes full of nothing but wadded-up pieces of newspaper, so you’ll have plenty on hand in your New Home.
When packing perishable items, such as yogurt, make a mental note to throw them away immediately upon arrival in your new home.
Be sure to take along at least 2,800 pounds of your old college textbooks with titles like Really Long Poems of the Sixteenth Century, the ones you never read when you were in college, the ones that are still packed in boxes from four moves ago. These are sure to come in handy.
It is best not to pack important prescription drugs such as tranquilizers. It is best to keep them on hand and gulp them down like salted peanuts.
Another total breakdown of rational thought occurs when you start deciding to leave behind things, as little gifts, for the new owners. You will look at your collection of seventeen thousand cans of various paints, none of which has been opened since the Protestant Reformation and each of which contains about a quarter inch of sludge hardened to the consistency of dental porcelain, and you will say: “The new owners will probably be able to use these!” You will say the same thing about the swing set gradually oxidizing into a major rust formation in the backyard, even though you know the new owners are a childless couple in their seventies. You will leave them your old eyeglasses, deceased radios, filthy rags, and baked goods supporting fourth-generation mold colonies. You will leave them half-filled bags of lawn chemicals that have, over the decades, become bonded permanently to the garage floor. Near the end, you will display not the slightest shred of human decency:
YOU (brightly): I’m sure the new owners would like to have this!
YOUR SPOUSE: That’s your mother!
HOW TO MOVE A PET
My major experience with moving a pet was the time we moved our dog, Earnest, from Pennsylvania to Florida via airplane. We took her to these professional pet transporters, who told us that for $357.1
2, which is approximately $357.12 more than we originally paid for Earnest, they would put her on the airplane in a special cage, which we would get to keep. The reason for this generosity became clear when I picked Earnest up at the Miami airport. It had been a long flight, and since Earnest had had nothing to read, she had passed the time by pooping, so you can imagine what the inside of her cage looked and smelled like, on top of which, as soon as she saw me, she went into the classic Dance of Lunatic Unrestrained Dog Joy Upon Sighting the Master, yelping and whirling like the agitator on an unbalanced washing machine, creating a veritable poop tornado inside the cage, just dying to get out and say hi.
In fact, this experience gave me an idea for a powerful and semihumane global strategic weapon, which would be called “The Earnest.” The way it would work is, we’d get some large and friendly dogs, such as Labrador retrievers, and we’d keep them in cages for maybe a week, feeding them bulky foods, then we’d parachute them into the Soviet Union. The cages would open automatically on impact with the ground, and these lonely and highly aromatic dogs would come bounding out, desperate to lavish affection all over the human race, and that would be the end of Soviet civilization as we now know it. Of course there is always the danger of escalation. The Russians might come back at us with, for example, St. Bernards. Maybe we’d better just forget it.