Moving: A Mathematical Explanation

When the last of the Boys flew away from the nest, Husband and I thought "Yay! We're done moving stuff!"

Weren't we cute, so young and innocent?

As it turns out, moving kids to their first dorm room is only the first of an infinite number of moves during college that can be expressed mathematically:

Stuff x (Years of Accumulation) x (Numbers of Friends Storing Things for the Month Between End of Old Lease and Beginning of New Lease) x (Number of Pick-Ups Available) x  (Flights of Stairs Between Apartment and Pick-Ups) / (Number of Young Knees Carrying Things Up and Down Stairs) = Ibuprofen

As a music major, Boy#3 had accumulated a fairly impressive amount of stuff. (Three trombones? Really?) He also lived on the second floor, which is a wonderful thing for avoiding road traffic and watching crowds go by on the way to the football game, but not so wonderful a thing when it comes to moving out large pieces of furniture.

Husband and his trusty tool kit got busy dismantling as much as could be dismantled...

...but some pieces are irreducible. Here goes the box springs:

And there goes the mattress:

If you look closely in the picture above, you'll notice that the backwards-walker is a tiny little pocket-sized girl. Folks, this was one valiant furniture carrier, who fit right in with all the manly men also toting drawers and bookcases and boxes down the 18 steps from the apartment to the ground floor.

I, on the other hand, only know there were 18 steps because I counted them carefully before I made my decision that my old knees had only so many steps left in them, and that I should bequeath my load-bearing role to the younger knees and stick my head in the oven. (Which, incidentally, had enough baked-on pumpkin pie filling that the furniture was completely loaded and moved before the oven sparkled.)

E, K, C, and Three, you're the bee's knees. Can we hire you again?