My Poor House

My parents decided that they needed to get away from all their problems for a while.  They planned a little weekend excursion to Ocean City Maryland.  This was the first time they left my sister and I home alone, and they trusted us to take good care of the house and keep everything under control.  Late Friday afternoon at about five o'clock was their time of departure.  Before they even pulled out of the garage, the supplies, for the party tonight, which we have been planning for a good week, were already on their way over.

As I waited for my friends to arrive, I took notice of how the house was so neat and clean.  The fresh aroma of simmering potpourri spilled out of the kitchen, where my mother had a little pot full of it..  The freshly painted walls were covered with portraits of family members and friends, which hung neatly in their fancy wooden frames.  The fibers of the recently vacuumed carpet stood at attention displaying how clean they were.  The varnished oak coffee-table glistened as the moonlight shined through the crystal clear window reflecting off its soft glossy finish.  All the furniture was aligned perfectly with the symmetry of the room, like a life size geometry proof.  My mother's knickknacks were arranged neatly in their proper order on top of the entertainment center.  All of our CD's and tapes were put away in their correct spots behind the clear glass door of the entertainment center.  The kitchen table was clear of clutter, and the sink was empty, accept for the drying rack in the right partition.  Then the doorbell started to ring, and the people began showing up. 

We had a lot of fun at the party, but I was not prepared for the aftermath the next morning.  I woke up late Saturday morning with a slight headache and went downstairs.  As I walked down the stairs, I coughed from the stale smell of cigarette smoke.  I looked around the place and almost dropped dead.  There were greasy hand prints all over the walls, and next to the front door, there was a hole in the sheetrock, which appeared to be the size of an angry fist.  There was a dirty trail on the carpet from the kitchen to the front door from everyone's dirty shoes.  The coffee-table was covered with a thin film of dust, from cigarettes and who knows what else.  The couch was crooked, the recliner was in the wrong room and I did not even know where the ottoman, which belonged to the high back chair, was.  Most of my mother's knickknacks were tipped over, and some had even fallen behind the entertainment center.  Our tapes were still in their right spots, but half of our CD's were missing, and the other half were in the wrong cases.  The kitchen was a disaster area.  The table was covered with empty pizza boxes from last night, and next to them were half a dozen used paper plates with partially eaten pizza crusts on them.  I could not believe the mess we made.  It took us the rest of the weekend to clean up and repair the place.  We tried to get it back to its prior condition so my parents would not be able to tell we had a party.  To this day, they have no clue to what happened that August weekend while they were in Ocean City.