My friend, Paul, said today, "I miss owning a house."
This statement seemed strange since Paul lives in a trendy loft apartment in a posh neighborhood near our workplace, Emory University. I was confused, until I remembered that long ago, a married Paul owned a married-people house where he played the married-man homeowner.
"I miss owning a house."
"uh huh." [thinking, "Oh, I need to get the dishwasher fixed."]
"there's just something..."
"uh huh." ["That dead tree is gonna fall on the neighbors' and we're going to get sued, I know it.]
"I just...liked it."
"uh huh." ["What exactly does extensive water damage look like anyway? Does it impact resale?"]
A few hours later, I watched my neurotic dachshund, Boxey, attempt to pee in the backyard. After noticing that she couldn't walk because the grass was six inches taller than she was, I decided to mow the lawn. I grabbed the lawnmower and scraped my ankle against the plastic hood. As I watched the blood trickle down my heel when I stepped through the foot-tall fescue, I compared Paul's homeownership to my own.
Paul: 3000 square-foot, new-construction home with garden tub and postage-stamp-size lawn where he planted heirloom tomatoes. Sarah: 1200 square-foot former crackhouse with a crawl space and a backyard formerly used to for dog fights and target practice where I dug up crack pipes and spark plugs.
After 90 minutes of lawn-mowing and weed-wacking, I had a scratch near my eye from a flying piece of pine mulch, a bruise on my shin from falling into a mole hole , a rash from something-or-other, and two smashed fingers from closing the shed door.
Paul's my friend and all, but I wish Paul owned a home.
2 comments:
A few thoughts ... I believe the house I owned was more like 2000 square feet. The reference to "married man home ownership" is laughable -- perhaps even sexist and unkind. Any nesting that went on in that house was done by me. The heirloom tomatoes were grown in the jungle like backyard which had a beautiful view of a very sketchy brick, 2 two story apartment complex. And as the for the joys of home ownership, my favorite experience was running my manual lawnmower (which often made the neighbors point and snicker) over an ant hill and ending up in the doctors office being fed steroids and anti-inflamatories. Ah, homeownership ... shall I talk about the time 2 months after we bought the house that I was told we had termites?
i'm with paul, kind of bristling at the unkind references to dog fights and crack houses. but if you have some skulls and bones back there let me know ;)
Post a Comment