Melissa's Place

Mr. Gray Briefs

(No appropriate picture)

Mark and I went to view a house in Burlington the other night. It was kind of funny because we wanted to seem like we weren’t complete newbys, so I had a clipboard to write things down on and we were trying not to just get caught up in the loveliness of the hardwood, but also to be critical of countertops and to look for foundation cracks and all that jazz. We wanted to be very thorough. We brought a digital camera to take pictures, even though it remained stuffed deep in my pocket the whole time.

When the lady of the house opened the door, we could hear a screaming child in the background. Not just crying but SCREAMING. Apparently he had pooped himself and there’d been some disagreement about whether the soiled diaper should be removed and a clean one re-applied. So she said they’d just be in the basement while we wandered around the house. We carefully wandered through the living room, sunroom, dining room and kitchen. We oohed and aahed over the back porch and the french doors. We envisioned having friends over for barbecues there. Then we carefully climbed the beautiful wooden staircase and marveled over the newly renovated bathrooms. We took our time to look out each window and examine the view. I even made note of which direction each window was facing. When we were in the master suite, we could hear voices in the back yard – the family had moved out there and they were eating popsicles and, I imagined, trying to stay out of our way. So we went downstairs, then continued to the finished basement, imagining ourselves to be the only people inside at this point.

In the basement, we immediately noticed how the Mr of the house had installed a screen and an LCD projector as well as surround-sound in order to have the full movie/sports experience. And off the main room was a laundry room and storage, as well as another small room which had been decorated as a child’s playroom. There were little colourful stools and small built-in shelves filled with toys and a small television perched on a dresser. It was on. We wandered into the room to examine the storage cupboards and I turned to my left and was stopped dead in my tracks by a chunky little half-naked boy lounging quietly on a small foam sofa in front of the t.v. He’d been around a corner, so we hadn’t seen him right away when we’d entered. He was certainly tubby, about four years old, and wearing only little gray briefs. He was slouched down on his little pint-size sofa with one arm slung over his head. I had clapped my hand to my chest in surprise and I said to him, “Oh, I’m sorry. Did we scare you?”

He looked at me calmly and just shook his head and went on watching his cartoons.

But of course, it puts a strange kind of tension on the close examination of a play room when there is a nearly-nude little boy lying in the room with you. So we just took a token look-around and then said, “Well. It looks very nice in here. Thanks.” to which he just nodded a casual farewell.