Confession: Sexist thoughts while moving home…
As anyone who’s been reading this blog for the past couple of months knows I’ve been in a protracted move of residence. Inevitably, this has meant moving furniture.
I write the following somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
I’ve moved quite a bit ever since the first half of the 1990s, my longest stay being in Norwood for just over three years.
I’ve used a removalist on a couple of occasions, but I think pride more that anything else has stopped me from doing so on most occasions. Someone saying “why don’t you get a removalist?” is probably only going to make me dig my heels in.
I’ve done some stupid things involving heavy lifting, being both stubborn and a guy who can lift heavy things. Back when I first moved out of home, rather than waiting until I could make use of my mother’s roof racks, I carried a fully assembled solid wooden bed to my new home on what was usually a half hour walk.
Luckily, as heavy as the damn thing was heavy (my grandfather made it to last and last it did – over 30 years) there was a structure headwards from the middle which allowed me to drape it over my shoulders and balance the weight front-to-back.
It cost me time but it saved me from having my mother involved and floating around and that’s the crux of things. As much as women have helped me to move on occasion, I really have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to a few things. Like talking to me (especially asking questions) while I’m lifting something heavy!
I’ve never had this problem with guys; specifically, no guy has ticked me off. That’s not to say that they haven’t asked me questions while I’ve been lifting heavy things while moving, it’s just that I can’t recall them doing so. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they did and I don’t care and can’t remember because I have a sexist chip on my shoulder.
Back in 2004 when moving from Norwood, I had the help of three women! Moving from my flat which just happened to be on the top floor of a block of flats that is.
The thing is, some of my white goods (specifically the heavier ones) were actually wider than the stairs which meant that they needed to be elevated above the hand rail where one wrong move could have meant either BANG-CRASH and/or injury.
When half way down said stairs with God-knows-what heavy object hanging in mid-air is not a good time for; first woman to ask a question, second woman to ask on a point of clarification on first question before you’ve even answered it and third woman to stand there expecting an answer.
Especially when there is a front door with it’s own stairs and a doorway wide enough for all the light stuff they are carrying.
I said as much. It’s bad OH&S (if it were a workplace – as a unionist I wouldn’t bat an eyelid at someone being fired for this tomfoolery, nor the contortions I went through to get stuff down the stairs). I pointed out that they had a full car so they could take that load and let us (guys) focus on what was some seriously hard work (at least with the equipment we had on hand).
We reached the end destination with the first load of heavy crap to find the ladies drinking wine and eating nice cheese platters. Which meant that they had drunk too much to drive of course (and a lot more work for yours truly who had made load/time calculations based on promised assistance*)…
It’s at this point that I articulated my first sexist thought on the matter. Are women entirely inconsiderate in a heavy lifting environment? Are they, when team work is involved in such situations, entirely autistic?
Maybe it’s just when it’s furniture. Maybe there is some resentment or something along the lines of Freudian penis envy (don’t take me seriously I’m not actually a Freudian). A still un-equal society telling them that they were meant for the kitchen while they have to sit back in Nietzschian ressentiment while men lift the kitchen.
That and just the slightest temptation of schadenfreude at the slim possibility of the (whopping great) washing machine and I doing cartwheels down the (cement) stairs. “Interrupt him while he’s concentrating“, says a little devil sitting on their shoulder (presumably one of these ones).
At this point, I’d like to tell any misogynists (and bizarre “right-libertarians”) who may be aroused by this tongue-in-cheek sophistry to get lost. There are plenty of other blogs that you may find interesting other than this one.
I’m pretty sure that none of this reflects upon women in general, rather just those atheist women who seem to surround me. The sample group is contaminated.
Anyway, it’s not like I can’t lift heavy things around women without things going right. Back early 2005 when I was getting past the 400k mark in the leg press, I’d been feeling a bit stronger than usual for a while and wanted to try a bigger increment than usual. I needed a spot, so I went and got a woman to spot me and everything went just fine.
Of course, she worked at a gym, it was a controlled environment with the right equipment and there was no furniture involved. Still, I suspect that I’d trust Chris around me if I was lifting furniture.
Anyway, I’m sitting here after a long search for a Phillips-head screwdriver with no luck. Screwdrivers aren’t like Allen-keys; they don’t auto-teleport off to that alternate dimension down the back of the lounge where all the socks and keys go.
People lose screwdrivers. They take them and put them where they don’t belong.
What prompted this post is these faint words that I can’t get out of my head in relation to my screwdriver; “I’ve just put your toolbox…”
Arrrrggghhhh! WOMEN! 
~ Bruce
* The “assistance” was reciprocated with me helping them, albeit with a much larger quantity of furniture.
