I've come full circle something...
About 24 years ago I left the city of Milwaukee when my parents moved us out into the farmland boonies of Caledonia, Wisconsin. That move was one of the single most important forces in shaping my life. Doubtless.
Well, 24 years later, with some crazy-assed, non-Euclidean path behind me, I finally have a Milwaukee mailing address again. I don't enjoy unpacking boxes nearly as much as I enjoy reminiscing, so I'll relax my sore muscles from the 10-hour moving extravaganza and share some details of those 24 years of exploring.
Summary Facts: In the past 24 years I've had 21 mailing addresses (not including Post Office Boxes); moved 21 times (lived in one of the places twice); lived in 6 states or prefectures in three countries on three continents; crossed the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and Mediterranean Sea twice each; lived on one island; lived in eight different barracks; considered a tent my "residence"; and once lived in a bombed-out building left over from Desert Storm.
Funny Residence Facts: The bombed-out building, notwithstanding its many holes, was not the most bug-infested place I've lived. One of the houses I lived in had a "swamp cooler"—an evaporation-based air conditioning replacement that would blow sediment all over the house, making the bed sheets a nightmare to crawl into if you forgot to make the bed. I once had a washer/dryer machine that could only be used on the back porch and had to be repaired just about every other use. I once had a neighbor who would magically sneak onto my back porch and sneak steaks, chicken breasts, or a rack-of-lamb onto my grill every time I fired it up. (I never figured out how he knew to have thawed meat ready, but I grilled his meals now and then for 2 years). In one of the houses I lived in, we set up a complete band area with more lights and speakers then you can shake a stick at, had a ceiling-mounted rock climbing area, and a unicycle training area. In one of my apartments, I decided to build my own bed, and made a wooden bed frame. In another apartment, three years later, I decided I was never going to finish the head board for that homemade bed and threw the bed frame out. The shortest time I spent at one of these addresses was 4 1/2 months. The longest was 2 years.
Funny Moving Facts: The shortest of these many moves was 1,369 feet. The longest was half a world away. I once crossed most of the United States in a 1978 Chevy pickup truck, only to break down inside the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel while crossing over the Continental Divide. While crossing the United States another time, the load in the back seat of the car shifted, activating the power window switch and dumping household good all over Interstate 15. The closest to dying I came in any of these moves was a near-miss Dodge Neon vs. Cow encounter with a black cow standing in the middle of Highway 2 in North Dakota in the pitch-black of night. During one move I abandoned a rental car that developed problems with its brakes—leaving it parked outside one of the military barracks I lived in—and have never heard what happened to that car.
There are at least one thousand more stories, and I haven't even gotten into all the wonderful people I've shared these moves and addresses with. There have been wonderful moments of laughter, moments of sorrow and doubt, spiders and scorpions, loads of laundry that wouldn't dry, stubbed toes, a shattered glass end table, and more packing tape than I care to recall.
I hope to make the next 24 years half as interesting...just with fewer moves.
~ topher