OK, here’s the deal. I had a really spiffy column to wow you with today, but it’s packed away somewhere in a humongous box. Actually, it was rolled up in a poster, stuffed down deep in a stack of clothes, crammed into a Spencer Gifts bag and then shoved into the giant box.

The column, a sure prizewinner, was folded, spindled and mutilated, and now it’s completely lost. It may be just a few feet away from me, but I’d have better luck finding the meaning of life or a reason to love editors.

No, man. I’m not finding that sucker. The eloquent diatribe is lost in a disfigurement of space-time so freakish, it would make a black hole look simple. I should have known the column would disappear the moment I failed to label the box with a thick marker.

That’s right. I’m in the process of moving. The column, which surely would have claimed a Nobel Prize for literature, is long gone. I’ll find it in a decade or so when the subject is no longer relevant. Musty, yellow and curled at the edges, the column will surface along with my baseball glove, can opener, toothbrush and “Night of the Living Dead” video.

By then, I’ll be toothless and insane, and I’ll have no need for any of those items.

I’ll be living in a squalid motel room on the bad side of town, a burned-out ghost of my former self. My life in ruins, I’ll spend nights drinking cheap rum from jelly glasses, lamenting my sudden descent into abject failure. I’ll be surrounded by boxes that I’ll search through nightly, in a frantic, vain attempt to recover my lost fortune.

The GPS helps

If only … , I’ll mumble over and over, before passing out from the rum and diesel fumes from the truck stop next door. If only I’d found that spectacular column. The acclaim would have been tremendous. Fame would have been at hand – and on its heels, wealth.

That one column, poignant, shocking, illuminating and penned with literary gymnastics never before witnessed, was my ticket to stardom.

But no. In my attempt to get from apartment A to apartment B in the quickest manner possible, I forgot the golden rule of moving. Everything – I mean, everything, mister; cats, dogs and children included – must be labeled with a giant Magic Marker. You mark your boxes on the top, bottom and sides. You keep a ledger to remind yourself what is in each box and where each box is located. You use global positioning if you have to. Because boxes disappear when you’re hauling stakes and moving on.

You’ll rip muscles in your lower back carrying the suckers. You’ll cut yourself on sharp edges and smash your fingers a bunch of times. But once the really big and important boxes are done pummeling you, they’ll sneak away and hide. It’s always the important boxes, too. It’s never the one with the candles, cooking spices and potpourri.

So anyway, the column, which surely would have been snatched up by the movie companies, is in a wormhole somewhere with my Concrete Blonde CDs and my classic alien in a jar. By now, your jaw should be dropping with astonishment at the brilliant, blistering string of words written with the white-hot intensity of a super nova. Answers to a thousand questions would have been provided. Your life would have been changed in myriad ways. By now, you’d be learning the secrets of untold mysteries.

Boxed in

So insightful was this particular bit of writing, it likely would have run in a special section of the newspaper with giant headlines. Long lines would be forming at those little, yellow courtesy boxes around the Twin Cities. But, no. I forgot to label the box and it’s gone forever. You’re not buying it, are you? Somewhere around the third paragraph, you began to suspect that I’m raving, another lame attempt to fill column space. You’ve snatched up a pen in order to dash off a nasty letter, haven’t you?

Hold those four-letter words, if you would. There may be no astounding, jaw-dropping column floating around out there, but there are boxes. Stacks and stacks of them being moved from bedroom to kitchen, from kitchen to truck, from truck to God only knows where. I deserve sympathy at least as much as scorn.

Moving is hell. We’ve all been there a dozen times or so. New walls, new neighbors, new scenery beyond new windows. The place where you sleep and eat and drink and bathe has changed, and it takes weeks to get your life unpacked. Parts of it won’t get unpacked at all. For a while, you live out of crates and bags instead of drawers and closets.

And stuff disappears. While you’re bashing your fingers and dropping stuff on your toes, some unholy force sneaks up behind you and swipes your most cherished possessions.

Keep an eye out for me, would you? Somewhere out there, along with a column bound for literary greatness, are other boxes of great importance. One is marked “Sanity,” the other “Patience.” I seem to have misplaced them both.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.