The truth is, I’m afraid of movers. Watching someone pick up the boxes I have ineptly packed or the furniture on which I spent too much money makes my heart palpitate like a mariachi band. But since I have an increasingly bad shoulder and no physical strength whatsoever, movers have become a necessary indulgence.

My friend Lauri commented last week over coffee at Starbucks that blue-collar workers of any sort who do labor on her behalf make her anxious. I suppose that’s the core of it for me, as well: liberal, white-collar guilt. When I lived in Chicago skyscraper, I always went in and out the back door because I was too terrified to face the doorman. Even today, when I have people in to clean my apartment, I can’t disappear from the scene quickly enough, and I often over-tip taxi drivers, hair stylists, and restaurant servers to the point of embarrassment for everyone concerned. (Once a taxi driver tried to return some of the tip I gave him, and I ran and hid in a building lobby until he drove away.) Luckily, I have never hired a prostitute: I just know I would end up being the one who does all the work.

Yesterday, Rob and I moved our things from Manhattan to Baltimore. Since he is the best boyfriend in the world and understands my erratic neuroses better than anyone else, he offered to stay in Manhattan to supervise the loading while giving me the comparatively easy job of supervising the unloading on the other end.* This meant that I was not in New York to help him with the last-minute packing of his own apartment, which lasted until four o’clock in the morning. I feel wildly guilty about this, but it’s nowhere near the level of agitation I would have experienced if I had had been there when the movers showed up.

I must confess that, despite my fears, everything went rather smoothly. Could it be that I am now desensitized? Perhaps I ought to hire movers more often. Or electricians or painters or doormen or hair stylists or housecleaners or prostitutes.

Um. Yeah.


* I spent most of the time hiding in the kitchen.