Today I took my gas grill for a walk down one of the busiest streets in Palm Springs.
Normally I wouldn’t advocate pushing a filthy grill down the street as a fun activity. But the situation was just so ridiculous, so stupid and so hilarious, it ended up being a highlight of my day.
Here’s how it happened:
The Husband and I were in the home stretch of our great migration. All I had to do was make a final walk-through of the old apartment, hand over the keys to the landlord and go home to my new place. I was just about to lock the door when I remembered the gas grill on the back patio.
The ridiculously oversized gas grill. The cumbersome, heavy gas grill. The freakin’ albatross of gas grills.
I tried every which way to load the stupid thing into The Husband’s Honda Civic, but it just wasn’t happening. The trunk looked like a sweet Kentucky girl making her first porn — it actually puckered up and recoiled at the sight of the BBQ. There was no way that thing was going in that hole.
Now I was in a pickle. I had a very limited amount of time left to hand over the keys to the landlady. But the grill had to be gone before I could hand over the keys. And the grill wouldn’t fit in my vehicle. I do have friends with trucks. But I didn’t know anyone who could give me a hand in the middle of a workday on such short notice.
I brainstormed a few options: Call an airport taxi van. Beg a nearby moving company for a cheap rate on one item. Make a “for sale” sign and try to sell the grill real quick.
In the end, there was only one thing I could do. I pushed the grill more than a mile down the street to my new apartment. In 100+ degree weather. While I was wearing a dress and high heels.
I don’t know if you’ve ever pushed a grill for any long distance, but let me tell you, it is miserable. Grills are not built to be strollers. They shake and rumble. The wheels get stuck. The metal clangs with a fierceness that pierces right through the eardrum, rattling the threads that hold brain to skull.
It’s like pushing the bad shopping cart at WalMart — except the cart is full of iron anvils and you’re on an endless stretch of bumpy asphalt in hell. Oh, and Satan is carrying a stopwatch.
About halfway home, the grill got stuck in an empty lot. The wheels sagged in the soft sand. Broken glass cracked under my shoes. I almost tripped and fell over a couple of broken concrete blocks. A man passing by stopped and lifted the grill enough to get it back on track. I thanked him and moved on.
In front of the hospital, a white-haired security guard in a golf cart eased to a stop. “Where ya’ goin’ with that barbecue?”
I quickly explained that it was my barbecue. I was simply moving it from one apartment to another because it wouldn’t fit in my car.
“Wanna lift?” he said.
The back of the golf cart flipped out to make a wide, padded bench, and we hoisted the grill onto that surface. The security guard then drove me to the edges of the hospital property, as far as he was allowed to go.
“I hope that helps a little,” he said.
“Oh, it did,” I assured him, and then I thanked him profusely.
“I just hate to see a pretty woman pushing a grill down the street,” he said.
“Well, who doesn’t?”
Then he asked me out on a date. I declined and waved goodbye.
I felt like there was some sort of lesson to be learned here. This was either a story of determination — or it was proof that I keep pushing my burdens around.