COLUMN: There is no place like home for a drug dealer
Like it or not, general reading public, we live in a world completely centered around catch phrases.
Many are about finding happiness, several are about love, most of them are about Bob Ross — you know, the gray-afro painter guy — but all of them have their own meanings and overtones.
Of the many catch phrases tossed around in the annals of some form of historical analogy, two immediately come to mind, “nothing good ever occurred while wading in wet cement” and “there is no place like home.”
The latter, of course, came into play just this week as I had the chance to go apartment shopping with my girlfriend. She likes her roommates and her living arrangements, it just turns out that she happens to like Bandit, her hyper little devil of a pet rat — I’m totally not kidding about that — even more.
She was looking for someplace cheap, nice, relatively nice looking, allows pets and preferably comes without having to deal with living with any roommates named Mork or Balki. She did some pre-shopping online, set a time to look at some places and, before I knew it, we were off faster than Mr. Rogers’ first pair of loafers.
I was excited to see the first one, it was close to campus and more cost effective than your average, run-of-the-mill Clark Bar. She gave me the address, and I made the quick drive over to the first candidate for her new home.
In specific order, we slowly scaled up the street looking for the address. We drove past the cozy blue building, the building with four stories, the building that was almost surely a drug stop and were about the pass the next one right as she interrupted me.
According to her count, we should have gone to the place just before. I didn’t think she was serious.
I parked on the roadside and we got out of the car, looking at a structure that could have honestly only passed a local safety inspection because the local authority had the flu that week.
You know, that home that is in every “Goosebumps” book? The ones where the lead kid and his best friend always end up standing outside and stare at blankly before one of them says, “Let’s check it out, what’s the worst that could happen?” — which is doublespeak for “Let’s go inside this possible annexed warlord headquarters and end up getting turned into a viscous sort of cotton candy, because getting killed might be a little content heavy for a young adult novel.”
She gave me one of those I’m-not-sure-if-we-should-go-for-this-or-not looks, followed by my it’s-up-to-you-but-what-is-most-important-is-that-you-have-your-life stares. Nonetheless, she decided to go through with it.
I kept my thumb on the send button for 911 and we walked toward the front door ever-so cautiously. I’ve seen Jamie Kennedy die in enough horror flicks to know to take this rather carefully.
After wading through a sea of newspapers and bright orange papers that might have been eviction notices, might have been parking tickets, but most certainly Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons, we found a salvageable spot where we could knock on the door without attracting the return of SARS.
After a few knocks and me glancing through Google on my phone to find a number for the SWAT team or at least the Superhuman Samurai team — I loved that show, don’t act like you didn’t — someone answered.
I honestly expected a meaner version of the grandpa from “Hey Arnold” to pop up but truth be told the current tenant seemed pretty nice. That was until they grabbed a lantern — no, not a flashlight, it was definitely a lantern — and said, “Come this way, and mind the dog poop.” Gulp.
Three minutes. That’s how long it took us to take a quick look the kitchen with no oven — you heard me right — saw the bathroom, or as I called it an “in-house” and heard the creaking noises that sound just before roller coasters collapse in Bruce Willis films, before I grabbed my girlfriend by the hand and made an absolute B-line for the car.
We scampered downstairs, tried to unlock the front door — I seriously thought for a brief second they were going to hold us hostage — and sped off as far away as my gas tank would permit.
Just before I dropped her off at her current home, I asked her what she thought of the most frightening place I have been since Horrorland, and she said, no joke, “Do you think they’ll let me paint in there?”
Stunned silence.
Man, that kid has got guts.
– Steve Schwartzman is a junior majoring in speech communication. His column runs every Wednesday. He loves sports, comedy and creative writing. He encourages any comments at his email steve.schwartzman@aggiemail.usu.edu, or find him on Facebook.