gistfile1.rb

One morning I looked out my bedroom window to see an enormous moving van parked
in front. A crew of twenty movers waited on the street for the one guy to open
the latch on the back. Once done, they immediately got to work. Desks, beds,
sofas, and chairs made their way up my sidewalk and into the front door, one by
one, one tireless mover at each end.

And on the string of deluxe handcrafted furniture flowed. It just never ended. I
lost count after 24 beds.

It was at this point that I grew suspicious. Where was mom? Why did she order
forty rocking chairs? No, it had to a mistake. They must think we’re a school.
Or a hospital!

And then the creaking started.  It began with the door, but soon it was all
around me. The tender shape of a children’s rocking horse poked and bulged
through the floorboards. Finally, the door busted open, and in spilled the
tangled wreck of furniture, like a wave.

At one point, they settled into the most perfect and pleasing to the eye
arrangement you could imagine. But then, as more and more piled in through the
doorway, the scene was ruined, and soon I found myself in a mere corner, trapped
by the wooden onslaught.

As my space grew smaller by the second, I cried and pleaded with the stuff,
begging for a way out before the crushing began. But as soon I had done this,
the stumbling brown glacier of lumber came to a sharp halt, and the silence was
noticable, until a guy outdoors yelled, “Yeah, stop! I think someone’s inside
there! Yeah, put down that china cabinet and take a look will ya!” And when they
hacked their way up the densely-packed stairway, I called out to them, and they
painstakingly cut me out of there. They brought me back out the way they came,
and led me to the project leader.

His apology was so long and drawn out that I started dozing in between the more
compelling points of his speech, but I made it through to the end reasonably
aware of the situation. Turns out, it _was_ all a big mistake. They packed the
wrong house.