Know a guy.
Yeah, I was Tony last week. But instead of pizza I was paid in beer. Good deal, would do again
My cousin has become Kevin. She got a big old van for her 2 kids. It has split duty now. Although she doesn’t do any of the moving and the price is a full tank of gas.
Oh shit. Oh no.
Im that guy who fixes small engines and computers.
I fucking love these.
My favorite is the Waffle House: https://wandering-nobunaga.com/stories/a-waffle-house-at-three-in
There is more?! Thank you for linking this!
Can confirm. Until I threw my back in my forties, I was Tony.
I threw my back helping someone move an exercise machine. For someone else.
A pizza is the price. Two toppings is typical, or the everything special.
For a while I was also the guy with the cordless drill you could borrow.
I am the guy with the truck.
The truck is proof that Americans can and will accept socialism.
It’s brocialism.
I am also the guy with the truck. But I do not drive 5-speed manual very well. So the truck lives at the house of my friend who is good at driving manual. He’s kind of my Tony, I guess. The truck is indeed a community resource of anyone we are decent friends with.
A.k.a. community
"What if we had a system where people could get the assistance they need. We could call it… Communityism.
The crazy part is it doesn’t matter who you voted for, everyone on both sides would generally love to help their neighbor and would offer a hand. It’s just when people get involved in the macro sense that they get filled with hate and anger. Makes me sad. Let’s just all move couches.
Conservatives are often nice to people they know. The in-group. The problem is when it’s a scary other. So they’ll let Jose couch surf for a week while he sorts out his housing situation, because he’s a good guy down on his luck, but they’ll rage against Those People getting anything.
That’s my understanding too. It’s like empathy just ends at one’s own line of sight. If I can’t see it or touch it, there may be something wrong with it. It’s infuriating.
Can we do that without the latent ableism that comes along with it, like the idea that if you can’t help people move couches then you don’t deserve anyone else’s help either?
This especially effects people with invisible disabilities, who are already viewed as lazy, but who also might be the most helpless when it comes to moving their own furniture.
You better come with some jokes then. When I’m moving some bulky furniture upstairs and really not having a good time, sometimes a well-timed joke is exactly what we need to drop it and injure ourselves.
Was this supposed to be an attempt at a joke?
If you want to be included by people, try to be less of a dick.
This isn’t me talking about the wider disabled community, of which I am part of, when I say this btw, this is me talking to you.
Okay, while you’re jerking off the dicks driving big-ass little-dick trucks, I guess I’ll try being nicer to those assholes while they honk their horns at pedestrians, double-park or park on crosswalks, and all that other shit that they do and everyone knows they do because they’re doing it in big-ass trucks and it’s not subtle.
Especially the ones rolling coal and flying trump flags. Should I try to be less of a dick to them to? I don’t want to be included in whatever they’ve got going on. I certainly would never ask one to help move furniture. Their trucks are only for show anyway…
Are you in a lot of pain or in withdrawel or something? I’m struggling to understand where all this self victimising vitriol is coming from otherwise.
Yes, being disabled sucks, yes most people also suck, and everything is also fucking awful everywhere most of the time, and that sucks too.
But this is a comment section under a lighthearted post about moving furniture, so there’s obviously something else going on that has you so upset.
If you want to be included by people, try to be less of a dick.
This isn’t me talking about the wider disabled community, of which I am part of, when I say this btw, this is me talking to you.
I think it’s kind of ablist to assume a disabled person has nothing of value to offer, like if they can’t move a couch then they are excluded. “Moving a couch” could be anything, it could be filing taxes or cooking a meal. Disabled people are good at stuff too. I think it’s really weird for you to make this assumption.
What I think is ableist is that you would try to pretend that disabled people don’t get excluded due to society devaluing the things they can offer.
It’s also ableist for you to suggest that a disabled person should be expected to file someone else’s taxes if they need help moving furniture.
You just gave a master class in missing the point.
My partner has disabilities and so they do not help lift the sofa. But they are a lot better at driving a manual truck than I am, so with a few pillows and adaptations in the driver’s cab that is what they do when someone needs a sofa moved. Some disabilities prevent you from driving the truck too, but it’s important as a group of sofa movers to make sure that everyone has something they can fulfill, even if that means planning the move. That can be incredibly helpful.
Anecdotes and exceptions don’t justify the erasure of marginalia.
Like, why don’t all blind people just become famous musicians so that they can be rich? Ray Charles did it.
No one in their right mind would think that means blind people don’t require assistance/accomodations.
Your partner has disabilities but can drive a stick shift? Great. I guess the rest of us disabled people just need to bootstrap a little harder?
We do socialism all the time.
Neighbors bring each other gifts. Friends feed one another. Someone is struggling and we give them what they need, no questions asked.
That’s not really socialism, given that it is not universally distributed but depends on one’s social connections. A socialist system would have impersonal mechanisms for catching those who fall through the cracks due to not knowing enough people to ask for and repay favours. (And those people do exist: “everyone knows a guy with a truck” except perhaps for a socially isolated shut-in or someone who does not speak the language, or someone who does not fit in with the community in their truck catchment radius.)
Yeah, in this case “everyone” literally just means “everyone who’s visible within my social radius.”
It completely erases everyone else, like the types of people you mentioned. It’s very in-group focused, and bears uncanny parallels to the fascist idea that outsiders don’t matter.
This is the best human interaction I’ve read about in a long time. Maybe ever.
Two decades later, I still regret the temporary back injury a friend sustained helping me to load my heavy desk into a truck I rented.
I feel like this premise could make an entertaining movie if you figured out the 3 act structure
With that beautiful writing style? This prose would be lost on film.
Honestly, I thought this was an excerpt from some modern classic usamerican novel. I was fully expecting to find this comment section full of references and people talking about the book.
Non-toxic Masculinity
Except women also have those connections.
The price may be different, like a baby blanket for their neice.
Absolutely
This must be downvoted because it is absolutely not a shitpost.
I wish there was a community for it, like cool bro shit.
Or Maybe wholesome memes?
Yeah, wholesome would be a good fit
Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, consider this sofa moved.
I was always the guy with the truck. For a couple years I was the guy with the minivan with no back seats in lieu of a truck, but now I’m back to being the guy with the truck amongst my circles. I didn’t know how much I liked being that guy until I wasn’t.
I am the guy with a ute (Australian for truck) but I dont come with. You can borrow it for as long as you need, it comes with a full tank and it comes back with one.
Its a bit of a heap but it starts every time and runs all day. I cant justify the yearly expense to keep it around for the dozen or so times a year I need it. But my friends and neighbours get great value out of it so I do.
My neighbor is the guy with the truck. He feels the same way you do, says he just can’t imagine not being available to help folks out. He’s helped me out. I help him out (not with a truck, of course). He has a truck because he is big, it’s comfortable, and because he can help people move shit or get mulch or whatever. He lives for it.
Dude this gold :))
Laughed quite a bit. This guy should be a writer he has a great way with words and stories. Reminded me of a Japanese Chuck Palahnuick
I miss work for trade…
You just took care of a guy and when the time came, he took care of you.
“Today you… Tomorrow me…”
You just took care of a guy and when the time came, he took care of you.
I mean, thats just how it still is in my village. It does not seem to be a particularly endangered way of living and rather the norm in rural areas.
This is the way
