Call me crazy, or perhaps I’m just precariously perched on the razor’s edge of sanity. What happens next is completely up in the air like those daft balloons and if the doorbell rings, all bets are off.
Over the past week during a stopover in Los Angeles and an ensuring absolutely strange series of casual property inspections with upscale real estate brokers, the crux of it is their propensity to talk trade without listening. Nope not even a word.
The property safe word for these closet BDSM aficionados seems to rotate around the constant use of the term awesome and those horrible spinoffs as in awesolutely, awesomeness or awesomnicity.
My brain turns to mush, angst starts rushing to my body, turning me into a giant raging tomato and even the ears start ringing at pitched velocity at a mere mention. Even a soft bedroom whisper of the line so agitates me that a near seizure state is attained.
The most amazing things is these words that spin out of the perma tanned Millennial Ken and Barbie set who broker posh chic properties are scripted to the point of jumping the shark. Remember that term from Hollywood days.
During one particularly rough inspection with a silicon Stepford daughter named Sierra, “awesome” entered into our 15 minute conversation some 56 times. How do I know this? I counted them in order to retain some semblance of sanity, otherwise Sierra was going to find herself thrown off a 14th story balcony with stunning ocean views and underground parking. Her final words that could be heard as she zoomed past the 7th floor, would be “who needs an elevator, when this awesome dive into the swimming pool is available?”
Though without a doubt the clear winner in this rant on awesomeness is the final line from almost every real estate showing, when I would search out a wide variety of excuses about not really being interested in the showcased property and try to get away from Barbie, Ken or Sierra.
I really do deserve a pat on the back a there were some gems ranging from “my accountant just sent me a WhatsApp message that I’m bankrupt”, or “this will be a great condo for O.J. Simpson, who is coming up for parole soon.” That last is just so LA and comes complete with a miniature Ford Bronco.
But each and every time I was foiled by the walking dead and they’d typically stare me straight in the face and shoot back “why that’s so awesome.” It’s as if they didn’t hear a thing I was staying and had only tuned into their high velocity sales pitch. As I ran to my car, that haunting line kept replaying in my head like some ABBA song.
You have to love real estate where even a no, means you can still be awesome. Not.