One Shots

Don't judge a family by their house

Have you ever driven down a road, at night and looked at the houses you pass? 

Some windows glow with warm lamplight, some with ice-white light, most dark and others covered up by pieces of material, wood and plastic. Some gardens are luscious shades of green, garden gnomes and pixie homes hide under neatly trimmed bushes. Other gardens are deserts, skeletons of trees dot their barren landscapes and ghosts of blossoming flowers are barely seen. Old city golfs are parked on gravel pavements or expensive cars secured in garages.

Every house is occupied by a family and every family has their story...and every story has a plot twist. It's a "don't judge a book by it's cover" scenario. A house is just a building, a structure of bricks and cement. That does not define the family living inside. 

That family of four that lives in the three bedroom, two bathrooms home may look like the perfect family...but are they really? The father bounces from job to job because he gets bored easily, the mother is in an unreliable job with bosses that judge her every move and the one child just wants to find that one friend that will accept them for who they are, while the other is getting into things that they really shouldn't but no one knows any better.

Everyone knows that one rich family that just irritates you to no end because they have to flaunt their money any chance they get. Sure they may have three porsches but the mother is always working and neglects her family and the father has three mistresses. The poor only child is taken care of by nannies and other household staff with all the lights on just to give the illusion of a full home.

You may judge that derelict little house in a dangerous area but inside that house lives a widow and her daughter. Her husband passed on and her son murdered in a gang shooting. The poor woman works hard and tenuous jobs every day just to take care of her ungrateful daughter who one day says she hates her mom and the next she loves her. That light is never snuffed out to ward off those who wish to hurt them.

The little apartment on the second floor houses a young woman who has just finished studying a three year teaching degree and is sitting in pitch black darkness because she has not found a job yet and cannot pay for the electricity and bundles herself in every blanket she owns just to keep herself from freezing.

A young man lives in the apartment next door with his four year old daughter who has grown up for the last two months without a mother because the lady has commitment issues and ran off with her hairdresser. 

Oh and we can't forget the newly weds who just moved into their first home, a duplex on a busy main road.  The woman can't conceive her own children and she cries herself into a state every night whilst her husband gently holds her and tries to think of alternative methods of having children such as adoption and how they'll be able to pay for the process.

Then there is the same-sex couple on the corner with their four adopted children and the stereotypical crazy cat lady at the end of the road who's cats destroy the spinster next door's garden every night fighting with the other neighbourhood cats.

As you can see, every house holds a story that is a secret to all but those who live there. Don't judge, just imagine their stories!