kiwords

Five years ago my husband (at the time) and I bought our first house. It was a two bedroom townhouse, and you would have thought by our pride that we’d just purchased Buckingham Palace. We were SORRY for the poor inhabitants of Buckingham Palace, because they didn’t get to live in our adorable little townhouse with the new carpet. Max was just a baby when we moved in, so we put in new carpet. No way was our child crawling on that nasty old carpet.
Anyhow, upon becoming owners of the new adorable townhouse, it became clear that the previous owner was…a whack job.
I mean, there were the small things, like the seventeen (no kidding) fly swatters he left behind. The package of boob-shaped pasta (cook 11 minutes for firm breasts, 14 minutes if you like ‘em pendulous). The size eighteen women’s bright red spangly high heeled shoes. All that stuff was…odd, but the sort of thing you might expect to find in a young single guy’s house.
The thing that really tipped the mental picture of him we were forming from “free spirit single guy” to “whoa…whack job” was the wall behind where his bed had been. We were painting the place before we put in the new carpet, and when we went to paint the room that had been his, we discovered the wall. In a half moon above where his head rested on his pillow, was a virtual relief map of snot. He had clearly reached up and wiped the treasures from his nose on the wall behind him. Nightly. Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to scrape old snot from a wall? There was a bunch of it too. As I toiled to pry the stuff of the wall (shuddering and taking frequent retching breaks), I pondered what sort of person would do such a thing. I mean, if wiping his mucus on the wall was his thing, fine. But how do you just LEAVE it there? Hadn’t he glanced at it as he was packing and felt even a pang of shame?
But then it got even weirder. About a month after we’d moved in, a horrible odor filled the house with the stench of death. There was this strange thing about the air flow in that house that caused smells to sort of congregate at the top of the stairs. The scent of the shampoo in the bathroom, the garbage under the sink downstairs in the kitchen, the forgotten sippy cup of juice under the couch, all those scents would wander around until they found each other and twined together at the top of the stairs. When I was pregnant with Raphael, getting up in the morning and finding my way down those stairs was like running some vicious gauntlet of nausea.
Anyhow, one morning the bouquet at the top of the stairs was paint-peelingly bad. We staggered through it and down into the kitchen, where we discovered the source of the smell. It was coming out of our dryer (yes, the washer and dryer were in the kitchen. I thought that was CUTE. I thought it was HANDY. I was delusional). He and I stood at the back door, gasping for air, wiping away tears, and discussing what on earth could be wrong. We decided there must be a dead creature in the dryer vent. It must have climbed in there and died, and now it was exacting its revenge on us for owning the site of its demise.
So an expedition was launched to crawl under the house and pull out sections of dryer vent until the one containing the dead animal was discovered. Although it would have made sense for there to be a mouse in there, the smell had me convinced it was a raccoon. Or maybe a horse. It was bad.
Do you know what was found in the dryer vent?
A box of Hot Pockets ™.
Someone had stuffed a box of Hot Pockets ™ into the hole in the wall, from the kitchen. In case you’re wondering what they smell like after weeks of being bathed in warm, damp air - IT IS NOT GOOD.
For the life of me, I cannot imagine WHY someone would do that. Did he think of it as some time-released house warming gift – you know, if by “warming” you mean “gassing?” Was it a joke?
So here’s my problem, and the reason I bring this up today. I CAN’T REMEMBER HIS NAME. The guy we bought the house from. For years I’ve hoped to run into him in some social setting. Not sure how I thought that would happen, but I HOPED. I wanted someone to introduce us, so I could say to him in a clear, carrying voice,
“Oh, I know YOU. I bought your townhouse – the one on Eagle Street! Yeah, I had to chisel your SNOT off the wall! And I’ve been wanting to ask you, WHAT WAS THE DEAL WITH THE HOT POCKETS ™?”
Only now I can’t remember his name.
There goes the death of another dream.