"HOMES" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

springing out at people in Psycho, only more unexpectedly. If you throw them
away again, they'll crawl right back the next night. Eventually you'll lose
your sanity, and you'll start deciding to keep them. "This looks like it's in
pretty good shape!" you'll say, holding up the owner's manual to the Chevrolet
station wagon that you sold in 1972. And all the other old possessions, back
in their closets, writhe with joy, because they know there is hope for them.

This is how deranged you can become: The last time we moved, I had to
physically restrain my wife from packing several scum-encrusted rags that I
had been using to clean toilets. It was also my wife who decided to keep the
greenish chair that looks like what would happen if a monstrous prehistoric
creature blew its nose in our living room. We had remarked many times before
that all the pain and anguish of moving would be justified by the fact that we
would be leaving this chair behind forever. It broke into open laughter when
it was carried into our new home.

HELPFUL PACKING HINTS:

After packing a box, always write your name on the top (e.g., "Barry"),
so when you get to your new home you'll be able to tell at a glance what your
name is. Tropical fish should be individually wadded up in newspaper. In
fact, it's a good idea to pack several boxes full of nothing but wadded-up
pieces of newspaper, so you'll have plenty on hand in your New Home.

When packing perishable items, such as yogurt, make a mental note to
throw them away immediately upon arrival in your new home. Be sure to take
along at least 2,800 pounds of your old college textbooks with titles like
Really Long Poems of the Sixteenth Century, the ones you never read when you
were in college, the ones that are still packed in boxes from four moves ago.
These are sure to come in handy.

It is best not to pack important prescription drugs such as
tranquilizers. It is best to keep them on hand and gulp them down like salted
peanuts.

Another total breakdown of rational thought occurs when you start
deciding to leave behind things, as little gifts, for the new owners. You
will look at your collection of seventeen thousand cans of various paints,
none of which has been opened since the Protestant Reformation and each of
which contains about a quarter inch of sludge hardened to the consistency of
dental porcelain, and you will say: "The new owners will probably be able to
use these!" You will say the same thing about the swing set gradually
oxidizing into a major rust formation in the backyard, even though you know
the new owners are a childless couple in their seventies. You will leave them
your old eyeglasses, deceased radios, filthy rags, and baked goods supporting
fourth-generation mold colonies. You will leave them half filled bags of lawn
chemicals that have, over the decades, become bonded permanently to the garage
floor. Near the end, you will display not the slightest shred of human
decency: