I once wrote a description about a house that angered the owner of the house, my client. He read my description and told me he was disappointed in me. Mr. Geisel told me in the Fifth Grade that he, too, was disappointed in me, but that disappointment was because of my attitude and this disappointment was because of the words I wrote about a rather horrible little house. I said there wasn’t a nice kitchen and there wasn’t a nice bathroom and if you looked at your shoes when you walked down the stairs you’d bang your head on the beam that separated the first floor from the second. I said that the basement was wet and scary and that it wasn’t as nice as your basement in the suburbs. That the kitchen was small and undersized and if you wanted to cook a chicken in the oven you’d need to either get a bigger oven or buy a much smaller chicken. I wrote that the house wouldn’t impress you and that it was more likely to disgust you. I ended by writing that none of that mattered because at the end of the lawn there was this great big lake, and if you just wanted a dry basement you could have stayed home. I thought it was a clever way to tell a story about what mattered, but the owner didn’t agree. Later, they fired me and someone else sold the house, which was promptly torn down. When I walk by the property now I feel vindicated by the absence of that rotten old house, and wonder if the owner has finally realized I was right.
