House of Terrors

I'll tell you. Sometimes I really wonder about people. Seriously.

Our house is currently on the market and we recently starting giving showings to prospective buyers. We recently had had 2 showings in one afternoon, the second of which was a young couple (probably in their early 30s). LOVELY couple - very friendly and very effusive about the house. But WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? They brought along their 2 overly-spirited children, aged 2 and 4.

Needless to say, the entire showing was pure chaos. These children, while certainly very cute (physically-speaking) were not the kind of kids a couple should bring to any civilized interaction requiring any amount of contemplation or serious adult discussion. As soon as the family entered our house, the kids made a bee-line for our cats, who froze in terror at the sight of them, and started chasing them around the house. The degree of zeal exhibited by the 2 year old boy toward our cats was excessive to a degree that I began to get a bit nervous. After all, one of our cats is 20 years old (God forbid - they might give him a heart attack) so I picked him up and carried him while we gave the showing, to protect him from the over-zealous kids.

The family was at our house for about 45 minutes and honestly, I wonder if the adults were really able to absorb the showing at all and take in anything they saw. They spent the entire 45 minutes, grabbing their kids (to keep them from the cats, from the valuables, from the furniture, off the stairs), chasing after them, trying to calm the 2 year old down (who was growing impatient with the whole process and started to throw a temper tantrum). As we walked through the house with them, pointing out the various features of our lovely abode, we could barely get their attention. The husband had flung the tantrum-throwing 2 year old over his shoulder while he flailed and kicked. The wife, was dragging the 4 year old girl through the house as she tried to pull herself loose from her mother's death grip. I could see that they weren't looking at the things we were showing them. They were saying "ooh" and "ahh" and "oh, isn't that nice" but their eyes were not focused on anything we were showing them. They were completely distracted and consumed with their kids. As each minute passed, the level of stress intensified and as we progressed through the house, their attention span grew shorter and shorter and they seemed more and more rushed, as though their was a ticking timebomb that was about to go off and they had to escape the house before that happened.

And the kicker? The man's mother lives one town over. They could have easily dropped the kids off there before they came for the showing. At one point the woman even said, "it probably would have been better if we didn't bring the kids". No shit, Sherlock.

I have a theory about people with kids. I think there's a part of them that thrives on chaos. I think the chaos creates a perception of excitement and drama that gives them the illusion that they have a life. In fact, I think many people have kids because they have no life. They need something to give their lives meaning and make them feel important, so they have kids. And then, once they have them, they drag the little anklebiters all over creation kicking and screaming, subjecting innocent bystanders (like hubby, me and our poor terrorized cats) to their obnoxious behavior.