Thursday, May 19, 2011

Did I tell you about that time a near-stranger found our stash of porn?

If I did, you can ignore this post, or just read all about it again.  It's pretty entertaining.

Many, many years ago, the husband and I bought a house in a very religious city, in a whitey-white American town, in a conservative area, basically, in a place we never quite fit into.  I mean, we're not building tributes to Burning Man on our lawn, but we do tend to listen to a lot more Public Enemy than our neighbors.  That kind of thing.

The main reason - the only reason, really - we moved to this city is because of its schools.  The district has the only gifted magnet program from 1st grade on [which gets less delightful as time goes no, but that's a whole other post] where the nerd kids are in their own school being nerds in all classes, from math to art to gym.  I highly recommend it as an elementary school program.

Anyway, we moved here when the girl was in preschool, because her preschool was in the area and we liked the city [leafy parks, nice swimming pools/clubs, good neighborhoods] even though it had no soul [no real downtown, 1970s era school buildings and city hall].  The people were nice.  I mean, not all kinds of demented fun and they tend not to swear as much as I do [but then, who does?], but nice people.  Churchy.  Conservative, but not in that Newt Gingrich-y sleazy kind of way.  Just whitebread America.

So we bought the house and a few years later, our house had appreciated [remember when houses did that?] and mortgage rates were dropping, and we decided to refinance for a lower rate.  Smart, sensible, what everyone else was doing.

Well, in order to refinance, your house has to be reappraised.  I made an appointment with the appraiser and set a day and time.  At that point, I was working part time and going to grad school [totally worth it!], so my schedule was more flexible than the husband's.  Also, he hates dealing with people, so I'm usually the person who has to make appointments and call for carry out and send emails to teachers.

Anyway, the appraiser shows up, and I start showing him around the house.  He says, "I think I know you from somewhere."
I think, "Great. I'm getting either hit on or ready to be fileted, neither of which is a great option right now." I say, "Hmm. . . I'm not sure I recognize you."

He says, "Oh, our kids go to preschool together.  My daughter is Blond Girl."

Oh. Sure. Fine.  I've been president of the cooperative preschool for about 3 years and know his daughter, and I'm kind of whatever. Small world, yadda yadda.

We continue our tour through the house and head down into the basement, which has been refinished into a really nice rec room area.  There's thick carpeting, drywall, and block windows that have been trimmed out with blinds hung from them.  There's also a fuse box that has been trimmed out with blinds covering it.

Him:  Can you show me the electrical box?
Me:  Sure, it's right here.

I walk over and pull on the cord for the blinds, yanking them up and displaying the utility box and:

Yeah. Pretty much this. Source.







At which point I die.
And grab the giant VHS boxes and say, "Huh, I'm not sure why these are here," and stuff them behind a blanket on the couch.  

To give him credit, the man continued his appraisal in a very professional manner.


27 comments:

  1. OMG. I love you and that is the most hilarious thing I have read all day. And I have been up for many, many hours.

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  2. Oh, precious jesus.

    We had the opposite happen here.

    In this very house I am sitting in, there was some kinda heavy duty wife swapping going on in the cul de sac.

    Yeah. Like TAPES and TAPES about suburban swingers in the walk in closet, top shelf, to the back.
    Cul de sacked is more like it.

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  3. Oh my oh my. How awkward. And hilarious. Love!

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  4. Dear Penthouse Forum:

    I'm a real estate appraiser in a small Midwestern town...

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  5. He may have had a stash of his own...doesn't whitebread often have a dark side?

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  6. oh, don't worry about a thing. based on my experience with conservative white-bread christians, y'all were probably the most vanilla people on your street. they're all dark and twisted, but they're just not allowed to talk about it.

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  7. Did you ever run into him again? Not sure I could handle that!

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  8. Interestingly I was just telling someone about an awkward conversation my EX and I had with one of his former coworkers about porn.

    This is too classic.

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  9. hahaha, awesome.
    My exwife and I had no shame. We had our porn stash on dvd boxes next to the TV separated from other movies and we had a sign next to it that said *porn*.

    So we didn't really have to explain ourselves much. Besides, we were both raunchy animals, so that said it all too.

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  10. Oh,hilarious!

    When a co-worker was redoing the bathroom of his recently purchased home with the help of his father in law, they found a dildo stuffed in a pillowcase and hidden in a small hidden area of the bathroom, left by the last owners. My co-worker said for a bit he kept explaining that it wasn't theirs, but then he just let it go and they never spoke of it.

    Awkward.

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  11. Bless your heart. But I'm sure his ability to maintain his professionalism was from finding similar things in other people's houses. We're all kinky little puppies, whether we admit it or not.

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  12. Oh my goodness! Hilarious!!

    One of my friends had a box of actual stuffed animal toys that her son wanted to play with. She told him they were old and dusty and she needed to wash them first. He promptly told his preschool teacher that "Mommy has a big box of dirty toys." The teacher didn't handle it nearly as professionally as your appraiser did. :-)

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  13. Too funny!

    And timely also, as I was cleaning the basement the other day and *ahem* came across a stack of VHS porn circa 1980 something. Hubby's high school stash.

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  14. So many things. Im just thinking so many things. Mostly: I love you. Also: Wow.

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  15. Brilliant. Just. Brilliant. There's no good place to keep porn. Because however cunning you think you've been, it's always going to be a place where someone 'stumbles upon it' you know when they're looking for whatever, or you're showing someone around your house, or it all just falls out of the dresser when you're parents are over for dinner.

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  16. why was it in the basement and not in the bedroom? what's going on down in that basement? gimps?

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  17. Pity it wasn't your husband who was leading the tour--then he could have just elbowed the guy and said; "huh? Huh, Buddy? Yeah! You know what I'm talking about!"

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  18. It's even more fun when your grown children stumble across those things. It's like they found a stash of boogers...ew! ew! EW! EW! GAH!

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  19. Please tell me they were home videos!!! At least some? Fantastic story, but did the property appraise higher or lower due to the porn? In my mind that is VALUE ADDED.

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  20. OMG funny! I'm sure the cleaning lady & the nanny have seen things at my house that I'd rather they didn't. We all just pretend it isn't there.

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  21. LOL...Oh dear Baby Jesus, that is some funny stuff....

    We once almost had John's niece accidnetally find some "Intimate tapes" that came from his first marriage (Oh he'd kill me) when she was under 10...and in our house. NOT GOOD....

    but this, this is better. You can't make this shit up!!!! :)

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  22. This has me in stitches. When I bought my first house, I hired a cleaning service (because I'm a slob and I knew I wouldn't be there for all that long, so I decided to do everything possible to retain property value).

    There may have been a time that I left restraints attached to the bed. The cleaning lady untied them & left them sitting on the bed. I think it was her way of saying "I saw this, but it doesn't bother me."

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  23. Wow, VHS porn? That brings me back.

    Isn't the new age of streaming online smut much easier? Now the only thing you need to worry about is people finding your bookmarks, instead of a stash of cassettes or mags...

    So I have to ask... how much Chasey Lain was in your collection? Bow chick-a 90's wow....

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  24. OMG, you must have lived in Kansas!

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  25. I just enjoyed the description of the town. ; )

    And I remember babysitting for our neighbors when I was younger and being SHOCKED at the ROOM filled with porn. But I never told my parents.

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  26. Love you. Seriously.

    I could tell you about the KY jelly my in-laws gave me in my Christmas stocking last year (I'm still hoping they didn't know what it was but my parents did);

    or the day my kids ran around the neighborhood playing cops and robbers with Mommy's handcuffs (valentine's gifts gone wrong);

    but then I would have to admit those things actually happened.

    So I'm going to go back to pretending.

    "I can't BELIEVE you got caught with porn. That would never happen to me."

    There. That's better.

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  27. "Electrical box" sounds like a sex toy.

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Every time you comment, I get a lady boner.