Like fish, houseguests start to go bad
after 72 hours. Unless you're the Andersons.
It's the off-season for houseguests. Summer vacation is over,
winter holidays are still to come. It's a good time to assess our
perform-ance and build for the future. Toward that end, I want to
rent out my friends the Andersons. Anderson is not their real name.
I'm using a fake name because I don't want them to get swelled
heads, even though there isn't much chance of that because the
Andersons, I suspect, are not human.
I surmise they're not human because at the end of their weeklong
stay with us last summer, I liked them even more than I did before
they arrived.
Consider: An entire family, four people, which outnumbers my family
(three people), stayed in our home for an entire week and not only
did no one strangle each other, not only did no one even want to,
but when the week was over, we all actually wished it could
continue.
That, as anyone who has been either a guest or a host knows, is
miraculous.
Houseguest ranks up there with
Congress, teenagers, and taxes as
among the scariest words in the English language. Generally
speaking, a story with any of those words as its focus is destined
to end badly.
So, how did the Andersons do it? I'm not sure, which is why I want
to rent them out. They could give lessons to others. They'd be
houseguest consultants.
Houseguests come in all forms, but they typically appear as a type
of evil space alien. They invade, suck the life out of you, then
leave. The difference is, you get to kill space aliens.
Some houseguests plunk their butts on your couch all day, waiting
for you to entertain them, even while they can't decide what they
want to do (Museum? Swimming? Go back home!!??), then eat
everything in your fridge, complain that the soda isn't the kind
they like, watch TV while you clean up, and in the morning say,
"You got another towel? I used this one yesterday."