Tricky Houses

Realtors have learned the hard way that houses will often misbehave when their owners are away. Houses will trick the Realtor, test the Realtor, and employ various pranks designed to cause insult and injury. One of the oldest tricks is the self-locking door. The Realtor accompanies his clients out the back door for a look-see at the back yard, and the back door slams shut from the inside, locked tight. Houses generally use the self-locking back door trick only when the Realtor has already left the key to the house (along with the Realtor’s car keys) on the kitchen counter and locked the front door after entering.

The three-legged barbeque is a great tool for a house prank. The mere accidental tap of a Realtor’s shoe will knock the leg of a barbeque off-kilter far enough to send the whole apparatus crashing to the ground like a fallen tree. The noise of the crashing barbeque is unnerving, and the resulting toxic mess of ash, old briquettes and grill-grease strewn across the patio is horrifying. Houses generally use the three-legged barbeque trick only when the Realtor has already left the key to the house on the kitchen counter and is trapped outside via the self-locking back door trick.

Decks are a playground of prank possibilities for houses. Potted plants, rotten deck boards, and loose deck rails have all been used to great effect. In fact, I have seen all three of those possibilities used at the same time. The Realtor trips over the potted plant with his left foot, drives his right foot through a couple of rotten deck boards, and grabs the loose deck rail to break his fall, pulling the deck rail down around his head and shoulders. His clients fuss over him to his great embarrassment, adding insult to his injuries.

Of course, the Realtor tripped over the potted plant in the first place because he was preoccupied, searching for windows that may have been unlocked, because he had left the key to the house on the kitchen counter, and was trapped outside via the self-locking back door trick, not to mention victimized by the three-legged barbecue trick.

Despite the insults and injuries the Realtor may suffer from misbehaving houses, he learns valuable life lessons from the experiences, such as how to maintain a professional demeanor while confronted with his clients’ efforts to distance themselves from his proximity, not to mention how to repair deck boards and deck rails, and scrub grill-grease off of a concrete patio.