PWNING Your Life

When my husband and I went house shopping for the first time we weren't sure what we were looking for. We found one house that I really liked, only the bedroom was — pink. Lord, it was pink. Pink walls, pink carpet, pink bedsheets (yes, the previous owners would be taking those with them, but it did nothing to make the room look better). It was like a horde of five-year-olds had vomited cotton candy everywhere. It was pink.

When I visibly recoiled, the real estate agent reminded me gently that these were cosmetic issues and could be fixed a lot easier than most. Still, I couldn't picture anything beyond the pink room and we passed on the house to eventually buy a nice place with eggshell-neutral walls.

For a little while there, my husband and I researched what different enhancements to our house we would want to make (new kitchen, a deck, etc.), and what it would do the future value of the house. Thinking like that flat out depressed me, frankly. I realized we were acting like we were just holding the house until the real owners come along. "We don't want to make it so that the Joneses don't like it when they move in."

In our increasingly disposable and digital world, the concept of "ownership" is becoming more and more of a debated term. And I'm not saying do we "own" our house when we still owe the bank a bucket of money - I'm saying do we PWN the house enough to feel confident painting a mural of the mystical city of R'lyeh, where the god Cthulhu sleeps, in our basement?

We live in a suburb. Our house plan is much like others in the neighborhood. We have to clear new paint colors, landscaping, and other external changes and improvements with the neighborhood association. But there are no rules governing what goes on inside the house - beyond, you know, having a business running drugs or prostitutes that have cars on the street day and night. Think of the children! The curious thing is, can we shrug off the "Oh no! What will it do to the resale value if we do X?" feeling in order to escape suburban malaise?

The funny thing is, the only thing stopping us is the thought of a young couple much like ourselves ten years ago, looking at the perfectly fine, not-easily-flooded, spacious basement, seeing Cthulhu, and running. They may not think the secret room that I really want to build as a cool thing but rather, "What the heck would I do with this? I certainly don't have enough books for a library, and it's not big enough to turn into another bedroom."

We've owned this place for ten years and managed to paint four of the rooms. Most of the walls are still eggshell, the rooms are still not-secret, and the books are everywhere, not all gathered into one cozy library. It's a standard, American, family suburban home.

Essentially, the house isn't geeky enough. See? I did it right there. Didn't even call it our house. It's the house. We don't want to own our house. We want to PWN it.

We're not completely Stepford. We have professional paintings of zombies, the Onion Head Monster and little beasts luring people to their deaths with free pie. We have statues of Cthulhu, Death and The Sandman. But this is not subversive enough. We must go farther.

During a recent dinner, where a full bottle of wine split between the two of us did much to lube the conversation, we decided what we wanted to do with the house. Our house. We decided right away that a moat was out. Although our neighborhood covenants don't specifically say "no moats" I'm sure they'd get us on a technicality, on digging, or landscape changes, or something. So no moat.

The next thought was a secret room. We talked about where we'd put it (No I'm not telling you, then it's not a SECRET), what we'd put in it (probably a secret library - or torture chamber), and how we'd hide it. The last part was tricky, because do you use a bookshelf to hide a library? What do you put on that bookshelf? Books you don't care about? Books that are uninteresting because you don't want anyone inspecting the shelf too closely? Erotica to keep people away, embarrassed? So many choices!

We discussed personal bowling alleys, a specific board game room, a sun porch that does greenhouse duties - I really like to grow and kill orchids - more weird art, and possibly adding on a tower. Although that one might be tough for the homeowner's association to approve too. But you never know....

I think choices are what make us PWN our lives. Having choices and making them without looking back. Instead of sitting in our white little interior, our little box made of ticky tacky, afraid to touch anything, to change anything, to choose anything but the status quo, we're going to change it. Our choices may not work, we may be made of FAIL, but at least we'll make them, by golly. Which is much better than holding the house forever for the next family who might have more courage than we do.


Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster who recently released her first novel, Playing For Keeps. She Speaks Geek every month on SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for more of Mur's musings.


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