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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crocodile who wrote (53917)	7/27/2000 12:19:18 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

I think the people who live in McMansions belong to a different species. They are either aliens from outer space, or maybe just a different branch on the old evolutionary tree. That has to be the explanation. I have interacted with them on a more or less superficial basis because their children go to the same schools as my human children. One of the freaky things about going into one of those houses is that there is never enough furniture to make it look like people actually live there. What few items of furniture are there are widely spaced, and when you talk the sound of your voice bounces off the walls and echoes. And the people always look a little apologetic about that. I've known one family who actually managed to almost fill up a McMansion. They lived at the very westernmost edge of Fairfax County, everything west of them was horse country, farm country and quarries, and then forests and mountains. The husband worked at some large corporation (Vice President of This or That) and the wife stayed home and bought stuff for the house. She bought huge tapestries and huge reproductions of art and hung them everywhere, so the place had a baronial air to it. There were two inch thick carpets, and almost enough furniture to make the rooms look inhabited. They had one child and one small dog, and the four of them rattled around this huge place in silence, not making enough noise to even be heard. Maybe the air was more funereal, now that I think about it. The oddest thing was, I admired her dog, and she tried to give it to me, like it was a possession she no longer wanted rather than a pet. No, the odder thing was that she told me that they were going to build a bigger house further west. Back to McMansions. I just don't get it. I've never got it. The first time I saw these mutant monster houses being built on these tiny lots, I thought "naw!" No one will ever buy one. But I must be wrong, because I see cars and I see basketball goals in the driveways, and garbage cans outside the houses on garbage pickup day, and I can see the lights from their televisions when I drive by. So my only explanation is, they must be a different species. At least they keep to themselves.