Pecularity

I hardly ever have friends over.  If I was to hang out with anyone either it would be outside my house which had nothing but a 3 stone sidewalk, in my backyard where there is a trampoline and a decent size yard or which was the usual, went over to other people's houses.  This was because I was embarrassed of my household.  Either my friends would get creeped out by the humongous amount of junk which included at the front door a piano that has never actually been used except as a table for family pictures and un-used accessories like flashlights.  That was just the first impression you would get from entering the house but if you looked to the right you would see a stair set full of books and boxes which were around my whole house and maybe a few jackets which were my moms or my sisters.  And to the left was always a couch that was completely bare because sitting areas were the only part of the house that was in constant use.  We never turned off our living room television.  You could drive by at 4 in the morning and see a light flashing from our giant, paned window.  I was always confused when people would say before entering their house, oh hopefully you don't mind if it is messy, because they never were.  Not the messy that I was used to.

    Even though I still had people over rarely, maybe to pick up something from my house or to do things that you could only do at my house like watch R rated movies and play countless hours of video games.  But then when video games started to become popularized, people hardly ever came over and would just invite me over.  Maybe they felt bad for me or were too scared to come back to the mess.  If my friends were used to a clean area of living I bet my situation would turn any free minded person into an anal mess which is what happened to both my brothers.  Both their houses are spot less of dust, completely organized alphabetically and polar opposite of my parents.
    But, possibly, my friends weren't just turned off by the idea of the mess but also the un-cleanliness that existed.  Both my parents were animal lovers.  My mom couldn't say no to my dad when he brought them in the house.  My dad who was the local art teacher which inadvertently turned him into the local salvation army.  Anyone who got sick of there pets or things or found such things would bring it directly to him, no questions asked.  He would also always except them without uttering a whisper to his family that had to put up with his panhandling ways.  Our house has always had dogs.  At one time we had about twelve Siberian Huskies and an assortment of smaller, indoor dogs.  Then we had a run in with cats because we kept on finding strays around the neighborhood and our boyish curiosities would bring them home.  We had about seven of those.  Then I got a bird for Valentine's Day which broke that levee.  Now we have three around the house, kept away from each other.  Other organisms that have resided in our house have been fish, chinchillas, lizards, turtles, a numerous array of fish, frogs, hamsters, gerbils and hermit crabs.  Everyone loves a particular animal but with a house full of a variety of every kingdom of animal, it could obviously become diluted.  The thing that is the weirdest is that we weren't bad owners either.  We kept up with all of them and never forgot about one or had to flush them down the toilet.  We would bury them all and they would live to their fullest extent.  Just like our hosuehold, these animals were never normal.  People say that nature or DNA is where we become who we are but through my household and my experience with it, it definitely proves that nurture or the enviroment in which you were raised is the culprit.  My dog Pepsi, a white Pug, was a barker.  She would bark at everything even if it was the wind.  She could bark for an hour straight eventually turning her repetition into a slow chant.  Then we had Otto which was black Pug who was first the smallest dog we have ever seen.  We thought he was part salamander because he had bow legs.  But, in literally one night, he changed from a tiny dog into a fat beast.  He would take pretzel sticks and hold them in his mouth like a cigar and run around the house looking to entertain any room.  That was ten years ago.  Now we have Dancer, an Alaskan Eskimo, which is one of the most peculiar dogs I have seen.  In her first two weeks here she had already found everything in the house.  She was an explorer.  Now she wants to know how everything works.  I think in five years she will be running the house without thumbs or maybe even become an engineer.
    After the embarrassment finally left me in my late teenager years and I stopped thinking about the idea that my friends would care.  Why would they care? is my instant defense if my brother Sean would ask me why I was bringing over my friends to this shit hole.  It's only a house and usually you go to people's houses to hang out or for the things inside.  And we had plenty of things to enjoy.
    I used to make movies called "The Chillax Effect" with my buddies Colin, Lucas and Mack.  They were usually just complete rip offs of other movies but with hilarity sprinkled throughout.  We would have whole scenes where every other word was a swear.  Each movie was based off of Max and Tucker and there fight to kill a zombie that was after them.  In each movie, the characters style would change.  One was gangster, another was hippies, then it just went to themselves.  We had over the top fight scenes that were usually not choreographed or if they were, would go completely hay wire.  I was the loser in the fights and would just get my ass kicked.  Some buddy had to do it and it was what we were going for, to be funny.  We wanted to film the movie in about a week because if you went over that amount of time you would forget about the project or get to far ahead of yourself and it would eventually be hated on by all of us.  We needed a scene but Lucas's house was off limits which is where we usually filmed and Colin's parents were home so we couldn't try and film there because they would get pissed at our vulgarity so we ended on mine which was last choice.  We only ended up filming one scene because we didn't really have a scene prepared but we wanted to film.  We needed the cameras to record us every second to not miss a joke.  So we went through my house and to the un-used basement at the time.  It was just filled with junk from old toys that my brothers played with like He-Men and Transformers to little children's toys my sister outgrew but my dad hadn't yet.  All we did was find a puzzle that was still in the box and while one of us talked into a television controller like a cell phone, the other was trying to set up the puzzle but in due frustration, flung the pieces throughout the room and that stopped the cell phone from working which Colin took out the batteries and tossed them to the ground which made the remote to gain reception again.  I remember finding those puzzle pieces, even though we tried to pick them all up after the scene, two years later when I was helping set up the room for my brother Sean because he was coming home after college.
    Then there was the time, the only time that I can recall, where a friend actually was amazed with the shit.  Dakota and I were downstairs in my room just hanging out, playing some Halo 3, waiting a few hours before heading over to his shop to record some music.  He ended up just leaning back and glancing around at the marvelous treasure in front of him.  There was guitars ranging back to the 60's still in mint condition and at least 5 of them, some neat records from the 70's that my brother Kane, a former disc jockey, gave us and a humongous telescope.  All things that I was apparent of but never really proficiently used them to their potential and neither did the family.  We found 2 pedals for guitars, one a wah-wah that was rare and one of the best ever made.  But when we eventually went to test it out it didn't actually work which was true with all the guitars too.  So many years of collecting from my fathers end left these items un-salvageable but priceless.  They were antiques of a time that he didn't have anymore.  I still joke around with Dakota telling him to come over more so he can search for that one thing that will turn up infallible and still working.  I'm still waiting for some thing to come out of that house to do the same.