To my credit, I didn’t laugh when she said it.

Sure, I rolled my eyes but I didn’t laugh.

I wanted to laugh but at the same time, I also wanted to cry.

So I rolled my eyes instead.

It was last Friday and I was standing in our living room looking at the boxes lined up against one of the walls.

My wife walked into the room and, reading the depressed expression on my face, said, “Don’t worry this one won’t be so bad.”

It was sort of like when Trump says the coronavirus will just magically disappear or suggests we inject ourselves with bleach.

You want to laugh but you also want to cry.

So you roll your eyes.

What my wife was talking about was our 22-year-old daughter Emma’s move from one apartment in Lawrence, Kansas to another apartment in Lawrence. The boxes lined up against the wall in our living room represented items that are part of that move.

Technically, Emma moved out of her apartment in March when the university shut down and currently is living in Kansas City. But she was able to leave her furniture and some other stuff in her old apartment until it was time to move into her new one.

It’s kind of complicated.

Because my wife and I aren’t total morons we arranged for a moving company to haul Emma’s furniture from the old apartment to the new one.

When I was in college I worked for a couple of moving companies. I hated it.

Later, when I worked in broadcasting-a transitory occupation if there ever was one-I helped many co-workers either move in or out of apartments. I hated doing that but not as much as I hated working for moving companies because, when helping co-workers move, beer was always involved.

Here is a tip for young people who ask co-workers to help them move: Don’t break out the beer until the move is successfully completed.

I know it sounds like a simple piece of advice but you would be surprised how many times it’s not followed.

And by the chaos that would ensue.

Unfortunately, beer was not involved in Emma’s move. Clearly this was a job for Scotch.

Ha! I joke. I don’t even like Scotch. To me, Scotch is something people with real grownup jobs drink when sitting around talking about the “Smedley Account.”

Or their golf games.

We arrived in Lawrence, early Saturday morning, about 45 minutes before the movers showed up at Emma’s old apartment. This gave us time to begin moving stuff out of Emma’s old apartment and into our cars. This was somewhat problematic as my car was already pretty much full of the aforementioned boxes that were in our living room.

By the way, I like the word “aforementioned”. It’s like getting three words for the price of one.

My wife would hand me a box of stuff from Emma’s apartment and say, “Here, put this in your car,” and I would say, “I can’t. It’s full,” and my wife would say, “No it’s not. Put it in your car.”

So I would take the box downstairs (Of course there were stairs involved), open the car door, throw the box in and slam the door shut before the boxes already in my car could fall out.

In case you’re wondering, my wife used to design clown cars.

Bozo: I can’t get in there. It’s full.

My Wife: No it’s not. Get in.

Once we loaded the rest of the stuff into our cars, we drove to Emma’s new apartment and started unloading it.

While we were carrying the first load of stuff in the movers showed up with Emma’s furniture and began carrying it into the apartment.

After Emma and my wife helped bring in the first load of stuff, they decided their presence would be better served inside the apartment.

Did I mention it was hot in Lawrence last Saturday?

I mean really hot.

So while my wife and Emma stayed inside “organizing” I made trip after trip from the cars to the apartment. While I was still unloading, the movers finished carrying in Emma’s furniture. When they were done, my wife paid them, then they got in their truck and drove away. It was their last job of the day.

For the first time in my life, I wished I were a mover.

Eventually, and when I say “Eventually” I mean “Many hours later” Emma was successfully moved into her new apartment.

We then went to a restaurant with strict masked and social distancing rules and had a really, really, really late lunch.

And beer.