Huge Pop Bedtime Stories Commentary #69: "Dormant Brawler"
Added 2025-02-18 22:43:03 +0000 UTCYou may comment. You should.
Comments
It's 100% mine as well
Jay Rigdon
2025-03-04 15:02:12 +0000 UTCThis is the kind of basement material I want to hear. That sensation of descending into the coolness to watch TV is crucial to my conception of basements.
Adam Drent
2025-02-25 15:43:00 +0000 UTC1) I've been spending a lot of time in Louisiana lately, where there are also no basements. I miss them. A good finished basement (and the occasional unfinished basement, if relatively clean, relatively lit, and stocked with a ping pong table or pool table or space for a big table to play poker at) is a treasure. My house growing up had the family room in the basement, and the joy of walking downstairs to watch TV and feeling the temperature drop palpably as I descended after a summer day working at the hardware store is a state of relief that I don't know if I think I'm even capable of feeling anymore. They didn't have window wells, just windows that opened right above ground level outside but at the ceiling level of the basement, and propping them open on nice days in the spring and fall for a nice breeze was also a treat. I don't think I'd have wanted my own bedroom in a basement, but I certainly slept over at houses where there were basement bedrooms or rec rooms with big couches to crash on. Almost always peaceful. And oh, what quiet. 2) Their basement flooded multiple times in January of 2008, when I was living at home and going to Manchester College (now, questionably, University.) There'd been a lot of snow on the ground and then it warmed quickly and rained for days, and their sump pump first didn't turn on properly (leading to me stepping unsuspectingly onto a wet carpeted floor one morning and noticing waves running underneath it like a waterbed) and then, once technicians came and fixed the initial issue, failed completely, leading to a foot or so of water and months of repairs. 3) Later that year, after a 7-3 shift at the hardware, I went downstairs and remember talking to my brother as he watched TV, turning enter the basement bathroom, breaking my pinkie toe as it was stubbed on the door frame, shouting some mild obscenity, and banging on the bathroom door with a fist without any real violence or power. Think a movie scene where a detective closes an ambulance door after interviewing an injured witness and then bangs on the door to make noise and let the driver know to pull away. To my surprise, my fist went directly through the door, which had been replaced after the flood by my mom's cousin, a contractor who had very clearly cut corners at every opportunity given the fact the door was completely hollow and made of a type of thin particle board I wasn't even aware of as a construction material. My wrist was scratched up beyond belief and I got in trouble as my parents (perhaps reasonably, I can't understate how shockingly flimsy that door material was) presumed I'd intentionally destroyed property by punching the door in anger. I managed to convince my mom of the real story. As far as I know that hole is still there, covered up by a hanging slogan sign that reads "This Too Shall Pass" and waiting to make my dad mad all over again whenever they decide to sell the house and he remembers it's there.
Jay Rigdon
2025-02-22 14:48:04 +0000 UTC
