A friend of mine asked me to look at a few potential homes with her today. Our first stop was a townhouse owned by a 30-ish married couple.The wife was sitting in her cluttered living room, which flowed off of the messy kitchen. She was quietly typing away on a laptop; I can only hope she was Googling cleaning ladies. The husband was in the basement. He was a regular Joe, wearing his baseball hat backwards, playing on-line Texas Holdem and watching a football game on the big screen; all that was missing was a bottle of Bud Lite. After we checked out the rectangle-shaped room, “Joe” attempted to engage us in conversation to reveal the selling points of the home:

Him: This is the basement. We finished it ourselves.

Us: Yes, we can see the carpeting.

Him: We watch TV down here a lot.

Us: Oh, how nice.

Him: We were going to put in a bathroom down here, but we didn’t. (Long pause) There’s no bathroom down here.

Us: Mhm. Thanks.

Him: We have two parking spots -- one in the driveway and one blocking the driveway.

Us: Uh…

We could feel the essence of his ignorance creeping in to eat our brains, so we politely excused ourselves to go back upstairs. The wife hadn’t moved. As we went to check out the bedrooms she yelled after us not to “mind the mess” – it was quite clear she didn’t mind it. The Mrs. suddenly appeared at the doorway of the master bedroom to impart some very important information:

Her: That’s a closet. There’s another one over there (pointing across the room).

Us: ……………..

As we exited the room, I looked on the bedside table and there is was. The key to this dead zone of brain synapse. The Broker by John Grisham. Need I say more?