Most people can’t quite put their finger on what feels ‘off’ about their lives.
At least until what’s ‘off’ is a little too ‘on the nose’…
“Wait, our real estate agent’s name is what?!?”
My Beautiful Bride had to do a double-take when I told her the name of the agent that would be handling the sale of her parents’ previous residence–but not for the reason I had expected.
“Why isn’t her name ‘Beth’? I told you I wanted Beth, so why are we getting stuck with ‘Marsha’ instead? This is bait-and-switch!” she protested.
“Look, if you don’t like Marsha, then you can spend 3 asinine hours on Realtor.com trying to find an agent. You know it’s bad when you realize the only thing helping you make a decision is automatically eliminating anyone who is the type of person that wears the ‘Merican flag in their Realtor.com profile pic,” I shot back.
I wasn’t joking either–you’d be surprised how often people around here are willing to professional desecrate Ol’ Glory. But poor clothing choices aside, there were a few metrics the website offered to help you choose an agent–namely ‘number of active listings’ and ‘total number of closings’. And of the 4 arbitrary finalist I had passed on to MBB to choose from, ol’ Beth stood out from the others on those two counts. However, my concern was that somebody that prolific would be too busy to give us the attention our modest house deserved. This one is kinda on me, as I should have known better–sure enough, my discerning wife would only accept the best of the best if given the choice.
“But I wanted Beth!” she continued her protest.
“I told you she would be too busy for us and that we would get assigned one of her random minions! But you’re missing the whole point here–look at her business card again. I’ll give you a hint: it’s not her first name that’s cracking me up…”
“Yo, Marsha, the landscaping guy you recommended flat out told me our job wasn’t worth his time.”
We were trying to get the grass cut before Marsha’s photographer was scheduled to come in a few days, and since we lived an hour away, we were at the mercy of Marsha’s recommendations.
Now you would think that when someone says, ‘I know a guy,’ that they have a solid enough relationship with them that that ‘guy’ will take good care of you. The wife might have been on to something…perhaps Marsha House–despite her name–is no ‘Beth’.
But to her credit, Marsha had a proper lawnmower man in her back pocket.
“Here, let me give you the contact info of my other lawn guy.”
I glanced at the contact card she had just texted me:
“You gotta be ----- kidding me–first, my real estate agent’s name is House and now my lawnmower man’s name is Blade?!? I feel like I’m living in an episode of Seinfeld!” I muttered to myself.
Namely, the episode entitled “The Library,” where you’ll never guess what the last name of the Library Cop is…
…
Oh what the heck, I’ll let you find yourself with this clip. Though you’ll get your answer within the first 15 seconds (or just by looking at the name of the video), I highly recommend you watch the entire clip. It’s one of the best performances by any one-off characters in the whole show…
“Son, the water’s lookin’ might rusty again!”
These were the last words I wanted to hear from my mother. Or my father-in-law. Or my mother-in-law.
But alas, all three residents of our Farmstead–“where we put our parents out to pasture”–had complained to me about the water a the new place after living out there for barely a month, so I begrudgingly supposed I had to do something about it.
I sighed a heavy sigh.
“Fine, Mother, I’ll call my water guy and have him come out and take a look.”
Right before everyone had moved in, I had the well tested for bacteria, and also looked into having a manual pump installed in our well. The company had sent out a sales guy that was real friendly and reminded me of my older brother Lyle. While I ended up not buying what he was selling, we did build enough rapport that I felt comfortable calling him ‘my water guy’–but that was partly because I couldn’t remember his name.
“Let’s see here,” said the receptionist at The Water Specialist, “It looks like you’re on a well, so I’ll go ahead and just have him come out since he knows the place already.”
I found her wording a little odd. I mean c’mon, Captain Obvious, of course we’re on a well–aren’t all your clients?
“I’m sorry, who did you say you were sending out?” I kindly asked for clarification on account of her using too many pronouns.
“Will. Will will be coming out,” she replied.
“Ohhh…that makes much more sense. You said ‘Will’, not ‘well’. Hah! His name almost sounds like what he does for a living.”
“You just wait and see…” I could have sworn she said.
“Come again?”
“We can’t wait to see you on Monday,” she said.
Odd. My hearing must be off…
Monday came and went, and so did Will, but not without first telling us that the only way to really deal with the dissolved iron in our water was to drop $6k on a water sanitizer. Not ‘softener’, but ‘sanitizer’–a few steps above and beyond the bougie softener that every Joe-Schmoe seems to have.
And in the meantime, my curiosity got the best of me, and I started wondering what Will The Well Guy’s last name was. Fortunately, this time I had his business card.
“Hmmm…I wonder what Will’s last name is,” I pondered. “I bet its something mirthful like ‘Smith’–then I can crack stupid #DadJokes about how he must always be ‘gittin jiggy wit it’, or ask him if he knows any ‘guys who were up to no good, startin’ makin’ trouble in [his] neighborhood.’ (#FreshPrinceOfBelAireJoke)”1Yes, if I would have actually said these things aloud to myself, I would have even said ‘hashtag Fresh Prince Of Bel Aire Joke.'
I rustled around in my wallet until I found what I was after.
“Lemme just check his business card…”
The point of the story is, when your real estate agent’s name is ‘House,’ your lawn guy’s name is ‘Blade’, and your water guy’s name is ‘Atwater’–water, for fuck’s sake–then you know that the conspiracy goes deeper than just living in an episode of a famous 90’s sitcom, much deeper than even something truly conspiratorial like the 1998 Jim Carey hit movie, The Truman Show.
That’s when you know that not only is your life just some dumb TV show, and not only have the writers of said show gone on strike with the rest of Hollywood, but that the asshole producers of your life’s show are perfectly fine with ChatGPT taking over writing duties…
Content created on: 31 August/2&3 September 2023 (Thurs/Sat/Sun)
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