This morning, for reasons unknown, my feeble little mind cast itself back over one of the gooniest experiences of my life. And it was an experience we went through because neither my young husband nor I had the nerve or the common sense to utter the word “NO.”
Back in the day, he and I lived in a gentrifying historic neighborhood that occupied a tract of beautiful old houses in central Phoenix. And our house was a beautiful old house: it dated back to the 1930s. We loved the place. To this day I miss it…though I sure am glad I don’t have to take care of it anymore.
So anyway….there we were, soaking up joy in the gorgeous old Encanto neighborhood, when one day this couple showed up at the front door.
They were, it developed, old friends of my husband, from college days. And, in classic hippy-dippy fashion, they had jumped in their car and taken off across the country, to craft the Adventure of a Lifetime. When they arrived in Phoenix, they looked us up, said “hello,” moved right in, and sat right down.
No kidding! They invited themselves in, and the next thing we knew they were unpacking their smelly gear in our family room, there to take possession of the sofa-bed.
They were carrying all sorts of food and crap in their car. This stuff, they hauled into the house and dumped in the family room. Half-spoiled, it stank to high heaven. That didn’t seem to bother them, though.
They hung around for a week or ten days, until I told my young husband to ask them to leave. Even then, it took some doing to shoehorn them out of the house! But eventually they moved their campsite to the downtown YMCA, and (mercifully) that was the last we saw of them.
The room stank for days after they left.
The one good thing that came of their little invasion was that my husband and I learned a good lesson: NEVER let people invite themselves into your home!!!
😀
Lordie! For awhile, I was afraid we would have to buy a new sofa-bed. Eventually we did buy a new mattress…but it wasn’t easy to find one, and it wasn’t something we were budgeted for.
I did learn a raft of lessons from that misadventure, though. Primary among them: I will NEVER allow people to stay in my home again, even if I know them fairly well.
You just never know what kind of stupid stuff people will get up to. Or how they live their daily lives, what their hygiene is like, and how much nerve they have when it comes to taking advantage of you.
Man! Once stung, twice wary!
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.