Moving Experience If You’re Relocating, Befriend A Weightlifter

I attended a press conference for the members of the U.S. Olympic Weightlifting Team because I wanted to ask them about the problem of being asked to move their friends’ furniture.

I don’t know about you, but when I was young and moved a lot, I always asked the strongest people I knew to help. I would definitely have asked an Olympic weightlifter, had I known one.

“Steve,” I would have said to him, “how about if you put that refrigerator in the truck? I’ll get these light bulbs.”

So I figured the members of the U.S. weightlifting team would be very popular at moving time. Do you have any idea how much weight these guys can lift? Neither do I, because for some reason here at the Olympics they still use the metric system originally invented by communists. My feeling is, if we’re still going to have to deal with “meters,” what was the point of winning the Cold War?

But there is no question that the Olympic weightlifters are lifting some VERY heavy weights, based on the fact that during the lifts their eyeballs bug out approximately 157 centimeters, as well as the fact that when they let the weights crash back to the ground, people as far away as Los Angeles get nervous.

Olympic weightlifters compete in two events, which are called the “clean and jerk” and the “snatch.” (Insert your hilarious naughty joke here.) In both of these events, the lifter must get a humongous weight over his head and hold it there until, in the opinion of the three judges, his facial expression clearly conveys the message: “Help! There is a live wolverine in my shorts!”

I asked U.S. lifter Wes Barnett, who competes in the 108-kilogram weight class (one kilogram equals 4.7 millimeters), whether his friends ask him to help them move their furniture.

“Yes,” he said.

“And what do you tell them?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“What about when YOU have to move?” I asked.

“I solicit the help of the rest of the U.S. weightlifting team,” he said. “And then I supervise.”

Bryan Jacob, who competes in the 59-kilogram (Celsius) class, told me that when he moves, he hires professionals. I asked him if his friends ask him to help them move.

“They do,” he said. “And I tell them, ‘I’m sure I can lift your furniture, but you should be aware that, when I’m finished with a lift, I let the weight come crashing down to the ground, and this might not be good for your furniture. And then they ask somebody else.”’

When a professional journalist is conducting a probing interview, it’s always important to have a follow-up question, and I had one ready for Jacob. “What is the capital of Vermont?” I asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “That’s precisely why they didn’t ask me to be on Olympic ‘Jeopardy!’.”

“Jeopardy!” is, along with “Wheel of Fortune,” the Official Game Show of the Olympics, and if you think I’m making that up, then you don’t know squat about international sports. Speaking of which, it’s time for…

Today’s medal update - The U.S. team, continuing its early dominance, took the gold in Sniping, Welterweight Hair Design, Off-Street Parking and the Men’s 1,500-meter Prance. Also, last night, on the tourist-mobbed streets of downtown Atlanta, I saw four men pushing a 12-foot-high Tarzan statue on wheels; Tarzan was wearing a sign around his neck urging you to follow him to a local bar. I don’t know if the Olympics has a Four-Man Tarzan Push event, but if it does, the U.S.A. is kicking butt.