Adventures in Procrastination

When I lived in Dallas, I spent a lot of time helping my buddies and neighbors move things. They called an awful lot, it seemed. "Hey, Paul, ol' buddy. Can you help me move a refrigerator? Can we use your pickup?"

I'm such a nice guy: I helped move stuff all over the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex. Refrigerators, king-sized mattresses, stoves, old couches, freezers, tables and chairs. You name it.

It got old and I got tired of it, but I just couldn't bring myself to refuse anyone. Anyway, I always treated myself to a milkshake afterwards, so…

One 4tha July morning, after helping to move a clunky old sectional, I spied a pile of cast-off decorative bricks. There were just enough to fill in an ugly bare spot next to my patio. In fact, those bricks would compliment the patio a lot. I loaded them into my pickup.

Well, a Texas 4tha July is not designed for heavy brickwork. It's hot and it's a holiday. So the bricks remained in the back of the pickup. And what with my busy work schedule, and errands, and chores, and commitments, those bricks stayed in my pickup. Pretty soon, it was mid-December and too cold to do any brickwork—even in Dallas. "In the springtime," I decided. "I'll definitely do the project in the spring."

Spring came, and just as I was about to unload those bricks one cool Saturday morning, my phone rang. "Hey, Paul, ol' buddy. Can you help me move my refrigerator? Can we use your pickup?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, "but I've got a load of bricks in my pickup."

"Oh," he replied quietly. "Okay. Well, maybe somebody else…"

Took me five years to unload those bricks.