Well, we knew it had to happen.

There would be no way we could get another move off without a hitch.

I was thinking that things were going good, we were getting stuff packed and loaded and no one had pulled a muscle or hamstring or whatever.

The bull in the china shop hadn’t dropped, kicked or shoved anything so hard that it caused a chain reaction of broken items.

Hubs can be really rough on stuff sometimes.

“Where did that big scratch on the table come from?” I’ve asked in the past.

“Uh ... I dunno ....”

“How did granny’s antique tea table lose a leg?”

“Uh ...I dunno ....”

Slam bam thankyouma’am, that’s how.

But we were chuggin’ along, getting stuff out to the U-Haul and scarcely able to believe how smoothly things were going.

Til the bossy boots blonde got off the elevator and accosted me, that is.

I was sitting in the lobby talking to a neighbor that I liked, when the Barbie wannabe stepped off and looked at me somewhat boldly and asked, “Are you moving?”

I folded my arms across my chest and said “Yes. I am.”

“Have you made arrangements to have the mattress removed?”

I knew what she was talking about, ’cause some skank tenant left a mattress down by the recycling bins hoping that the truck would pick it up.

It just happened to coincide with our departure from the building.

I hadn’t really given it too much thought until another neighbor asked me about it.

I told that neighbor that I was unaware of a mattress having been left, but that it certainly wasn’t one of ours.

In any event, I answered blondie’s question with, “It is not my mattress. I don’t know whose mattress it is, but we are not so skank or slovenly that we would leave it for someone else to take care of.”

“Well, I see that the mattresses you’re loading are brand new.”

OK.

First of all, the only word that immediately came to mind started with a “b” and it wasn’t “blondie.”

I said, “Well, if you must know, those mattresses are four years old. If you would like, I’ll happily escort you to the truck and you can shove your face in one and take a deep whiff. Again, I don’t know who left that mattress down there, but it certainly was not us.”

It was all I could do to not jump off that sofa I was sitting on and hog tie her with her own pony tail.

She huffed off and I let go a string of expletives the likes of which surprised even me.

Hubs came in a few minutes later, huffing and puffing, pulling the dolly behind him.

He took one look at my face and said, “Uh oh. What happened?”

My friend started laughing her head off, as I went into great detail re-enacting my encounter with the bimbette.

He shook his head, steam coming out his ears and said, “I’ve already had two people walk out onto their balconies and ask if that mattress is ours.”

One thing is for certain.

No one in that building has any idea of the force of nature that Hubs can become when push comes to shove.

Don’t mess with the unassuming looking guy who laughs like Ricky Ricardo.

Just because he laughs at almost about anything doesn’t mean he takes things lightly.

He can turn into a tempest in a teapot in a snap of the fingers, and it ain’t purty.

He made a vow there in the lobby that he would wring the neck of the next smart aleck that posed that question.

Note that I mentioned they had been asking from the safety of their balconies.

They could clearly see the beast, but they knew better than to get too close to the beast.

The mattress in question ended up on the curb, and the recycling truck clearly pretended it didn’t exist.

I know how they feel.

That’s the attitude I now have with our former residence.

And some of its tenants.

I’m sure that we will be remembered as “the tenants who ditched the mattress,” but I rather be remembered as “the tenants who left the burning bag of dog poop at the front door.”

Has a classier ring to it, dontchathink?