Houses and Henry

Today my good friend (also my fiancé) Adam and I went looking at houses in Hamilton* together. We're not ready to bye yet but it's nice to get an idea. Plus it's fun. We went to 3 houses.

The first was was all redone nice but it had a weird layout and was quite small (even for a small house) and was made even smaller by the fact that it was super crowded from people who, like us, saw the big ad it had in the Spec**.

The next one was much roomier, but was cold from being heated only by radiators and had some weirdness. The weirdness? There was a toilet in the basement laundry room. No, not a washroom. A toilet, just sitting there by the washer and dryer so you could do your business while the laundry maid*** looked on. Also Adam and I couldn't figure out how the owners got a 4-foot wide washer and a 4-foot wide dryer down a 1-foot wide staircase. Baffling.

The last house we looked at was in a grungy neighbourhood where every other yard had a plastic Virgin Mary. The house itself was like the others except whoever lived there was a freaky religious knicknack collector. Every room had at least a thousand Madonna statues, crosses, and pictures of the Pope****. One room had a photo of the Backstreet Boys*****. (???!) And there was a poster of women in Budweiser bathing suits in the upstairs hall.

*A city known for steel, polution, McMaster University, and generally cheap housing.
**The Hamilton Spectator, a newspaper.
*** Though I'd imagine someone who could afford a maid just for laundry could also afford to install a furnace.
****I'm not even kidding.
***** A boy band once popular with preteen girls and apparently also enjoyed by freaky religious knicknack collectors.


Later, Adam and I wrote the following, non-househunting-related, revolving story:
Henry

Once upon a time there was a pebble named Henry. Henry was in a tough situation as he was stuck in some guy's shoe. Every week he ended up somewhere else; this week it was Mississippi. Some pizza guy's shoe. It didn't smell but it wasn't very roomy being that there was a foot inside it. You see Henry was a Quantum Leap fan and built a leaping machine but instead of leaping from human body to human body he leapt from shoe to shoe and couldn't figure how to change it.

It seemed as if he would always be stuck in shoes. You would think that people would feel the pebble and throw Henry out but surprisingly not. Henry wanted a change and began working on his greatest invention ever the super flux capasitant, which as everyone knows is a super tasty kind of cheese that if Henry sold it would make him the richest pebble ever and he could buy all the shoes and never have to share with a foot ever again. But Henry knew this was a ridiculous idea as pebbles don't need money and even if they had it, couldn't spend it anywhere since he couldn't get out of the shoe. Besides, who would sell a pebble shoes? How would he carry his money? It would be bigger then he is.

Then he got an idea. He would communicate telepathically with the pizza guy and get him to buy things online for him. This is the way he would start his large shoe collection and buy all the shoes in the room.

I know what you're thinking: a fabulous notion. I mean a pebble with a shoe collection. Crazy yes. Impossible...well yes I mean...no.

So he began taking classes in telepathy but since he was a pebble it didn't work. Since he could not talk he could not tell the teacher he wanted to sign up and he instead had to sit in the back and pretend to be a pebble on the floor. Which he was so he wasn't really pretending.

But anyway without warning he started convulsing like a crazy pebbly monster who likes snickers bars and floor lint. This would not stop him from his ultimate goal of cross-dressing dogs in gay clubs with other snickers bars. "Man", he said, I have to lay off the drugs. It started with just one puff and now I'm an addict! So he went to Druggie Pebbles Anonymous and signed up. This time he could talk because he was talking to his reflection in the other side of the shoe. Remember, of course, he can't leave the blasted shoe. His hallucinations were going overboard. He's a pebble. Geeze. He can't do squat. Man, he thought to himself, what can I do? Maybe suicide. But no since how could he commit suicide when there was lint in the shoe watching his every move and forming a support group for suicidal pebbles? No, he would escape the shoe instead to find a chango machine. Chango, the famous suishi vending maching company.

Their machines were very popular. Even so much so that this very shoe had one. Henry jumped up and tapped one of the buttons and out came a meal of sushi. Since he could eat it he just sat there and ate it. Then he ordered 50 more sushi meals and stacked them on top of each other to make a ladder and escape the shoe. Then he went out into the world to find a witch who could change him into a human with her magic. He asked the witch, without speaking or moving, to change him over.

She instead accidentally turned him into a small pebble that was stuck in a shoe. What luck. Oh the humanity!! I mean pebbleanity!! It was terrible to think his measly existence was even measlier than before. But wait a minute! This was a sandal! He fell out and went to find a more reliable witch who could speak pebble and would change him into the sexiest man and he knew with a pebble in his shoe.

He would be the pebble of course. Wait, maybe a gall stone. Or a ball bearing in some fancy machine. That would be great. He couldn't find a witch. They all died in the great quake of 1980. It was a shame. There were no more weirdo pebble speakers. He became depressed and stopped breathing.

He started molding over like cheese and then someone came by and said, "Wow this is the tastiest cheese ever!" and they paid him a million dollars. No actually a billion trillion guzillion dollars plus all the shoes in the world. And he was happy forever and ever.

The End.