How You Will Feel After You Finally Sign The Agreement Of Sale
You’ll experience a feeling of almost unbelievable elation, even better than the way you felt the time Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault on national TV and it was empty. This feeling will last for as long as seven tenths of a second, at which point you’ll remember the clause in the sale agreement, put there by some writhing little insect of a lawyer, that states:
The SELLER agrees that if, at ANY TIME prior to the actual sale of the house, SOMETHING BAD happens, like for example let’s say that on THE VERY MORNING OF THE SETTLEMENT, through NO FAULT OF THE SELLER, a TREE ROOT that for 127 years has been totally benign, suddenly, as if guided by DESTINY, decides to block the MAIN MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER LINE in front of the seller’s house, causing a veritable VOLCANO OF RAW SEWAGE to erupt right in the SELLER’S GUEST BATHROOM and quickly flow “THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE” while the SELLER is out at the SUPERMARKET picking up a bottle of WINDEX so as to put the last few finishing touches on the HOUSE so that it will be neat as a PIN for the NEW OWNERS, then HA HA the SELLER has to give the BUYER all his DEPOSIT MONEY back and the SELLER can kiss the whole deal GOOD-BYE.
So for the two months, or whatever, between the time you sign the contract and the time you actually close the deal, you’ll experience a condition that famed psychologist Sigmund Freud identified as Agreement of Sale Paranoia. You’ll be afraid to use the heating or air-conditioning systems; afraid to use the water faucets, turn on lights, or close doors firmly; afraid even to speak too loudly, for fear that you might set off some kind of sympathetic vibration that will cause the whole house to fall down. In short, you will become a crazy person. “YOU FOOL!” you’ll shriek, leaping out from behind your hedge and tackling the UPS man just as he’s about to ring your doorbell. “Are you trying to KILL US ALL?”
This is a natural reaction, but the truth is, you probably have nothing to worry about. The odds are that nothing bad will happen, and when you finally get to the Ritual Closing Ceremony, when you realize that the whole thing is going to work out after all, you’ll experience a feeling of relief, a feeling that will grow stronger and stronger until, moments before the sale is legally finalized, you are knocked to the floor by the shock wave from the gas main exploding directly under your house.
But you’re not going to let a little thing like the total destruction of your house, seconds before you were about to sell it, get you down. No, you are made of sterner Stuff than that: you are a Homeowner. You’re not a particularly bright one, given the fact that You bought this book, but nevertheless you are going to pick up the pieces of your life, as soon as they come down out of the sky, and get on with your life. Because you know that you’ll have plenty more homes to own before you finally shuffle off what we in the real estate profession call “this mortal coil” and go up to that Great Subdivision in the Sky. I’m willing to bet there will be nothing in your price range.
Index
B
Bakker, Tammy Faye, 135
Bang, Big, 70
Big Stu’s Discount House of Taste, 90
Boone, Pat, 51
Brando, Marion, 29
Brite, Rainbow, 64
Bunny, Billy the, 69
C
Capone, Al, 142
Center, Epcot, 30
Cher, 109
Coffee, Mr., 42
Consumer Money Geeks, 35
Crockett, Davy, 125
D
Dallas, Debbie Does, 112
Death Penis, 84
Dick, Moby, 137
E
Earl’s All-Night Nude Review & Motorcycle Repair, 7
Eggs, Cute Little Baby, 26
Elizabeth, Queen, 109
Evening Gown Competition, 12
F
Fairy, Car, 7
G
Godzilla, 122
Gulp, Big, 111
H
Hancock, John, 39
Helpful Seller, shooting of, 138
L
Lassie, 108
Lawns in space, 121
libya, 23
M
Mary, Virgin, 18
McMahon, Ed, 3
Midnight Dance of the Bozo Father, 103
Muffler, Mister, 32
P
Packing People, 44
Pediatricians Backwards “R” Us, 67-68
Perkins, Tony, 52
R
Ranger, Lone, 67
Retrievers, Labrador, as strategic weapons, 65-67
Reynolds, Burt, and giant centipede, 71
Rivera, Geraldo, 142
Robbins, Harold, 136
S
Sashweight, Wilmington A. “Bill” IV, 90
Savage, Wayne, 28
Slime, 103, 109
Spark Plug, 126
T
Tokyo, destruction of by mutant insect, 99
Two-Shoes, Goody, 124
U
Uncle Roger, garroting of, 139
V
Vermin, Surplus, 104
Z
Zoo-Roni, 91
About The Author
Dave Barry is a staff writer for the Miami Herald, where he writes about such topics as politics, world affairs, and giant mutant crickets attacking villages in Peru. His weekly humor column appears in more than 120 newspapers, and his writing has appeared in a number of national magazines. In 1986 he won the American Association of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award for commentary. In 1988 he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, an event that confirmed the widely held view that western civilization is headed down the toilet.
Barry lives with his wife, Beth, and son, Robby, in Coral Gables, Florida, in a house that is slowly getting worse.
About The Illustritor
“Shoe and Skyler" creator Jeff MacNelly has won three Pulitzer Prizes for his political cartooning with The Richmond News Leader and The Chicago Tribune, and has twice won the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben. He was never in the Marine Corps, but did work for Camp Monadnock in New Hampshire, where he learned that summer camp is a lot more fun if you’re a counselor. His cartoon strip “Shoe” is syndicated in over nine-hundred newspapers. Jeff, his wife Scottie, and his three sons live in Virginia, where he enjoys painting, sculpting, and building stuff.