The quest for the Holy Grail

In the quest to find our version of the Holy Grail – that perfect combination of community, schools, neighborhood, house and lot – we recently moved to the small town of Milford, Michigan.

And like any good quest, we endured our share of trials and tribulations.

The Trial of the Boxes.

To save a little money, we decided to move all of our boxed items, leaving only those items likely to cause a hernia for the moving company. During the four days between our closing and moving dates, we transported countless boxes to the new house.

Each night, I surveyed the remaining boxes and smiled, knowing we had made a significant dent in the pile.

But each morning, I shockingly discovered the pile had managed to multiply, like rabbits on Viagra.

Ripping open one of the boxes, I recoiled from a paper cut that nearly severed one finger.

"Yow!"

"What now?" came the curt response from my harried wife.

"I almost cut my finger off on this box top!"

She examined the injury.

"It’s just a little flesh wound," she said. "It’s not even bleeding."

"Yet!"

My pain grew as I looked inside the offending box. It contained items that hadn’t been "unboxed" since our last move, some four years before.

Or even longer.

"Dear?" I said, sucking on my finger.

"What?"

"Do we really need this Oriental dinner set?"

"Yes. It was a wedding gift from a good friend of mine."

"But it hasn’t been out of the box since our wedding night."

At this point she opened a nearby box and pulled out a college text book.

"And what about your old Human Anatomy text book?"

"What about it?"

"Hey, if you don’t know human anatomy by now... ."

Ouch.

The Trial of the Well.

My wife and I were raised on city water. Cold, clear, chemical-filled city water.

Boy, do we miss it.

The water in our new home originates from a well.

As a result, it tastes funny.

But the worst quality of our water is, undoubtedly, the smell.

Actually, it reminds me of my childhood.

One year, my mother forced us to hand-paint hardboiled eggs. Then, on Easter morning, my brother and I received orders to search for the eggs, as the "Easter Bunny" had hid them around the house during the night. This might have been fun, if not for the fact that I had begun shaving earlier in the year.

Three months later, on an especially hot summer day, I began to detect an odor that seemed to originate behind our t.v. cabinet. An odor so foul, it made tears run down my face as I drew closer to it. An odor that seemed almost inhuman.

Peeking behind the cabinet, I discovered a partially decomposed blob marked with a small skull and crossbones. During the time it took me to run to the bathroom and vomit, I realized the offensive odor came from one of the Easter eggs I had painted three months before.

The smell of our well water bears a striking resemblance to that Easter egg "blob".

People in the neighborhood claim we’ll get used to it.

I think they’re missing the point.

The Trial of the Cable.

The first two weeks after we moved, we had neither television nor internet service. The prior owners had used a satellite dish for television, and – gasp! – dial-up service for their internet access.

As our family had no experience with a satellite dish – "Daddy, can we use it to contact aliens?" – and little desire to go from high-speed internet service to painfully-slow dial-up, we contacted the local cable company.

"Of course we can provide you with cable television and high-speed internet, sir. This is the new millennium."

Two weeks later, we were still stuck in the old millennium.

Meanwhile, my sons were on the verge of nervous breakdowns.

"Dad, if I have to watch this stinkin’ video one more time, I’m gonna hunt down Spongebob and squeeze every last drop of water from his little yellow body!"

"Then how about playing a board game with your brother?"

He looked at me like I was from another planet (summoned here by the neighbor’s satellite dish, no doubt).

"Okay. Let me see what I can do."

I located an ancient pair of rabbit ears and attached them to the one television in the house that was old enough to accept them.

"What’s that?" asked my boys.

"It’s called an antenna. It’s what we used to watch television when I was a kid, before cable."

"So then it doesn’t need electricity?"

"Very funny."

I turned on the television and managed to locate a fuzzy version of ABC. It might have been a professional bowling tournament. Or, possibly, "The Wizard of Oz." I’m not really sure.

All I could make out were a pair of red shoes.

My kids were so disgusted, they actually went to their room and began to read.

Eventually, we broke down and ordered satellite television and dial-up internet service.

Life is once again taking on some semblance of normalcy.

Meanwhile, my wife has threatened me with great bodily harm should I ever express a desire to move again.

Which is a shame, really, since it appears the backyard may not fit the inground pool I’ve sort of had my eye on...

Copyright 2003 Marc L. Prey
All rights reserved.