Our Big Move

There's a film that came out when I was a kid called Max Keeble's Big Move. I've never seen it, but I've seen the previews in front of other Disney feature films. Basically, within the first few seconds of the preview it cuts away to Max Keeble talking to his parents, saying, "We're moving?!" And then Max Keebler decides that since he's moving, he's going out with a bang, and the trailer shows him causing all kinds of shenanigans at school on his last day.

Real moving is nothing like that. There's no time for shenanigans because you're too busy putting everything you own into boxes. So that you can shortly thereafter take everything out of the boxes. It's madness.

In our case, we had even less time for shenanigans because we had to find a place to live. Our landlord's house wasn't yet on the market, so we had time, but we didn't know exactly how much. The house could sell right away, in which case we would then have thirty days as the sale was going through. But the house could also be on the market for weeks or months, as had happened to several houses in our neighborhood.

"I don't think we have to worry," I informed my roommates. "Maybe the house won't sell. Maybe the buyers will want to rent to us still. I feel like everything is going to be okay."

But, understandably, that wasn't a huge comfort to my roommates. So we started holding roommate councils on Sunday nights. Soon we had a good four rental house walkthroughs lined up. Yes, you read that right...rental house. We decided we might as well rent our own place while we were making a change.

Here's what happened while we were house hunting: We looked at some very nice and not-so-nice houses. We met a potential landlady who made us uncomfortable by sharing weirdly personal information with us. We asked questions about microwaves, swamp coolers, garden boxes, parking, and bolting bookshelves to the wall. We got Indian food. We made lists. We were charmed by a early 20th-century home with an upstairs window alcove, but we couldn't get around the fact that the only bathroom was literally in the middle of one of the bedrooms. We sent each other links of other potential homes to visit, including some that we decided were kidnapping scams. Half our walkthroughs were rescheduled or canceled.

Towards the end of the preview for Max Keeble's Big Move, it cuts away again to Max Keeble talking to his parents. This time he says, "We're not moving?" Then he has to go back to school the next day and handle the fallout from all of the shenanigans he did on his intended last day of school. That always confused me. Even as a child, I knew that it was pretty unlikely that you would be moving one day and the next day suddenly not be moving.

But one other thing that happened while we were house hunting was that our landlord came back and said, "Just kidding. We don't think we're moving."

So they haven't moved...and neither have we.

FALSE ALARM.

Should have trusted my feelings on this one.