The Big Lug (Cigar Smoke 10-23-08)

I rarely think about schlepping, unless I am the one doing the schlepping. For those of you who don’t know what schlepping is, come on over to my house. I have a few very meaningful tasks I need help with.

Like most of you, I have done a lot of schlepping in my life. I remember a long time ago when I was about 17 and my family and friends all went to the beach for a big old beach bash and weenie roast and sand in your butt-crack event.

We had three cars full of people and beach crap and we get to the beach and everyone piles out of the cars and runs to the beach to frolic. I’m a little late in getting out of the car and I am a little late in the intelligence department and I’m standing there and pitifully pleading to a bunch of deaf people, “What about the ice chest and all this stuff? I need help. Please!” They don’t even look back. They just frolic their guiltless asses down to the seashore.

So I take the ice chest out of the trunk. It’s full of, well, ice. And cans of soda. It is heavy. It is heavier than Rosie O’Donnell after eating her second KFC bucket. I wrestle the ice chest out of the trunk and then I start carrying it toward the shoreline of death, four miles away. This, of course, would be bad enough, but I am also trying to carry a handful of beach towels and two folding chairs and some swim fins and a bag of sandwiches, so I won’t have to make two trips.

I can’t finish this story. All I remember is that about a fifth of the way there, I started to sweat, and the sweat was getting on my hands and I couldn’t grip the ice chest and it kept slipping, and all the other beach crap was falling everywhere, and I felt unappreciated and ignored and I wanted to cry, but the sand in my eyes soaked up the tears so all I could do was attempt to make this pathetic little crying sound, but no sound would come out and I went blind from sweaty-sand-in-the-eye-syndrome and I hated life and hated my family and hated my frigging friends and I purposely stepped right into the middle of a little kid’s sand castle just to hear what the sound of crying was like. It was my introduction to schlepping. “Hello, schlepping.”

Schlepping replied, “Bite me, loser.”

Through the years, I have had many moments of schlepping. When my darling children were both toddlers, I schlepped all their playpens and cribs and strollers and jammies and teddy bears and toys and rockets and food jars full of squished peas and diapers full of squished pea results. I have done it all. I have schlepped where no man has ever schlepped before. If I had a nickname it would be “Schleppy.” And if I was a folk-singer and if I had a hammer I would kill Schleppy. Yes, I would keep hitting Schleppy over and over while a nice, lilting folksong melody lingered in the background.

I guess you can see I’m a little sensitive to schlepping. I thought most of my schlepping days were behind me. I was wrong. Marge, The Schlepping Master, asked me last fall if I would mind helping her Soroptimist Club at its annual auction. I said, “It’s not on a Sunday, is it?” She said, “Why, yes, it is? Why do you ask?” I started to say “NFL football” but I couldn’t get it out and just sobbed to myself and started looking for a hammer.

So I helped her at the auction. I schlepped some stuff into the house where they were holding the auction. It was pretty minor-league schlepping. Not too much crud. Nothing too heavy. And the auction went off smoothly and they made money to help out humanity and I was getting ready to go home and I noticed something strange. I was one of the only men left there. (The other men were what? They were smarter than me.)

I schlepped our stuff back to the car. And then I looked over at Marge and she had this pre-schlepping authorization expression on her face. I said, “What is it?” She said something about all the folding chairs had to be taken out to the back and there weren’t any men around except one guy who was faking a leg injury and would I be a wonderful husband and help them out. I said, “Can I be back to the house by 5:15 for the Sunday night game?”

Anyway, I schlepped for about an hour, back and forth, taking the folding chairs somewhere they weren’t, and the guy with the fake leg injury wouldn’t look directly at me, and I got all sweaty from my schlepping and on my final trip back to get my last folding chair. I was so sweaty that — and I am not making this up — my pants fell down. Just slipped right off my sweaty hips. (Calm down, ladies.)

Yup, I was standing there sweating my schlep sweat and my pants were draped around my ankles and I looked up and the fake leg guy was looking at my pants and he looked up at me and said, “What are you doing after the auction?”
I said, “I’m gonna get a hammer and kill a folk-singer. Wanna come along?”