The Possum in the Closet

My recent house hunting adventures reminded me of a story from my past that simply cannot go untold. Several years ago, one of my best friends, Lindsey, and I had just graduated college and landed our first real jobs at Southwest Airlines. We thought we were a big damn deal. We were not. We worked for almost nothing just so that we could have the honor of saying we worked for one of the best companies in America. The benefits were legit, but the pay was not! Still, every day was a fun day at SWA, and we were high on life… ready to go out and conquer the world. Obviously, we were silly and naive. After getting a few months of steady post college paychecks under our belt, we decided that perhaps having a roommate would create a little additional disposable income for the two of us. Because we were extremely bright college graduates (insert belly laugh here) it only made sense to live together and somewhere close to work. SWA headquarters is across the street from Dallas Love Field Airport. The kindest adjective I can think of to describe the neighborhood is SKETCHY! Suitable apartments in the immediate area were few and far between so we opted to rent a house. What an adventure! Our first foray into house hunting! So very grown-up! We had no idea what we were doing and no business doing it without a gun or a bodyguard in that neighborhood. The very first house we visited ended up as the setting for one of our most hysterical and EPIC stories of all time. After work one afternoon we rushed to the car and set out to view the house that we were just sure would be our new home in a few a short weeks. Based on the pictures and description online, it was a jewel… a hidden treasure in the barrio! Back then we still used MapQuest to navigate our way around the big city. As we pulled onto the street of our afore mentioned jewel of a home we were absolutely certain we’d made a wrong turn. How could our hidden treasure be on a street of homes with garbage pilled high in the yards and old cars up on blocks?! After double checking, we realized we were indeed on the correct street. Still, the red flags didn’t register… odd given that we were extremely bright college graduates (insert belly laugh here… again). We pulled up to the house (sans realtor… yet another red flag), walked up to the door, put in the code to the key lock box that the “realtor” had just given us over the phone, and sauntered into our dream home… or so we thought. We both wondered around imagining what it would look like with a little bit of paint and all of our charming home accessories. Then we got down to business and started looking for all those things our parents had reminded us were important… plenty of cabinet space, updated appliances, and most importantly an abundance of closet space. Closet #1, just right. Closet #2, kinda small, but okay. Closet #3, a possum… not okay! At this point Lindsey was still in the other room mentally filling it with all her most prized possessions. I screamed, “There’s something in the closet!” and ran to the other room. Lindsey felt sure I was being dramatic and had just imagined it. So, because we were extremely bright college graduates, we went back and decided to inspect the closet a little closer. We opened the door again, and sure enough, there sat a very angry possum… very angry… not the cute kind like in that book Possum Magic… this one was very very angry.

We slammed the door and took off running. We couldn’t get out of that house fast enough! Then, when we got outside we were so flustered we couldn’t get the key back in the lock box. While struggling with the lock box, we noticed something else we had been oblivious to when we pulled up… a whole gang of men standing around drinking beer and leering at us in the middle of the afternoon. Finally, we got the key in the lock box, our butts back in the car, and our doors locked. It seemed like it took an eternity to escape! THERE WAS A POSSUM IN THE CLOSET!!! How does that even happen?! And what kind of realtor just gives out the key lock box code over the phone to a random person?! Obviously, it’s the kind of realtor that is too afraid to venture back in there a second time. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for us to decide that a commute to work wasn’t so terrible after all and perhaps a swanky apartment in Plano was more our style. Now, I’m a bit older, and I’ve accepted that I’m not nearly as bright as I once thought, and I’ve come to learn that a college degree is certainly no substitute for good old fashioned common sense. I hope that this time around I’ll be more aware of the red flags, and thankful that I can afford to live in a possum free environment these days.