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Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

ann_landers-baboon-2-copy

My husband and I just put our house on the market and I have a real estate question for you.

He is a scientist who uses rats to do research on addiction. Last year, he decided to experiment at home with an idea he had at work – that rats might find Oreo cookies to be as addictive as cocaine.

This was the kind of experiment he couldn’t get government funding for at the institution where he works – that’s why the study was set up in our laundry room. I objected, of course, because even with the precautions he took with regular clean-up and freshening the cages and whatnot, all my skirts started to smell like a Rat Barracks after a few short weeks. In part this is because he had to keep all the windows shut and doors closed on account of the presence of the cocaine and the fact that we live next door to an Elementary School.

Like I said, he was doing it on the sly.

Anyway, he started to find out that the Oreos are just as addictive as the other stuff. And with Double Stuff, the Oreos are TWICE as compelling. They have more allure than morphine.

It was all very exciting.

In fact, it was so promising, my husband got some federal funding and moved his experiments back into the lab.

Meanwhile, a few of the rats escaped and now we have a problem with a worthless bunch of O-heads back at the house. I mean it – they got totally hooked on Oreos and now they don’t want to eat ANYTHING else. At all. And even though we stopped buying the cookies, we live next door to an elementary school (I know I said that already) and the children regularly bring contraband out into the schoolyard.

Now the emboldened rats are literally chasing children on the playground just to score some of that lunchbox gold. It’s a good thing the tykes aren’t armed, though I know the NRA wants them to be. I’m afraid the random, panicked shooting would perforate our house.

Anyway, I’ve sworn off Oreos and I’ve told my husband he can no longer bring his work home – our neighborhood is terrorized by red-eyed vermin with blackened teeth and milk keeps disappearing from the refrigerator for no apparent reason.

So, back to the real estate question – I’m afraid that if we’re able to move, the new owners will quickly discover the local rats are crazed and the structure will have to be abandoned and possibly burned. I tried to find a way to disclose this on the Truth In Housing form but I couldn’t find a blank space big enough.

Dr. Babooner, is it always best to tell everyone the complete truth?

Sincerely,
N. Festashun

I told “N” that telling everyone the complete truth all the time would be exhausting and probably impossible. But there are some things one shouldn’t gloss over, and selling someone a house possessed by demon, cookie-craving rats is probably one of those things. Unfortunately. The real moral of this story is that grown-ups should leave their work at work.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

29 thoughts on “Ask Dr. Babooner”

  1. hmmm….
    If one works from home, it’s pretty much impossible to leave work at work- you just have to temporally and spatially contain it. I fail on both counts, but I’m working on it.

    And no, absolutely one should not ALWAYS tell the truth. But if you’re signing an official document that says you have fully disclosed everything, the Prussian rule-follower in me says that if you get caught leaving something out, expect it to cost you big time.

    Hamline University is nearby, have you considered hiring their piper?

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    2. I actually saw the Hamline piper practicing one day. He was actually a block away…standing on the grassy island in between the east/west bound lanes of Pierce Butler Route. I can only assume that someone told him to stand in the middle of the road.

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  2. Good morning. No, you shouldn’t always tell the truth. There are definitely times when you shouldn’t including certain occasions when you are asked to comment on hair styling or clothing choices. Regarding the rats, I think you really need to find a way to get rid of them before you sell the house. Don’t you think you could catch all of them in traps baited with Oreos?

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  3. I love the real estate truth-in-selling law. Love it more as a seller, Then it removes the moral decision from me. Makes me do what I really want to do. Levels the market. I mean I didn’t have to guess how honest other sellers would be. I have sold three houses under it. Did each time a full and complete disclosure of some significant issues. They sold in 1) 5 days,2) 22 hours, and 3) three weeks. I think people buy houses more with their emotions anyway.
    A delightful 83-year-old woman is coming to visit my wife next week. She always wants to buy a carving or a painting. I never sell them. She has a lot of money from a later-in-life marriage. She can spend pretty much as much as she wants, but when she dies, it goes to her husband’s nieces and nephews. I have my own truth-in-selling carvings rule. I tell her that are not great but they are better than the price most people would want to pay, but then she offers a bigger price. So I tell her that they are not worth that much. When she tries to buy a painting, I tell her that compared to paintings by real artists they are not worth anything so I cannot sell them. She things I am funny. She told me that I’m like the artist in the movie “The Trouble with Harry,” which is true but I had not thought of that.
    . She laughs but she is frustrated by my rule. She is used to getting her way: she invited herself and her niece, my wife’s friend, to our apartment next week for a brunch with my wife’s quiche and my biscuits. She is the kind who can pull that off. She’s brassy, pushy charming, except to her niece, who is appalled by all this. The 83-year-old warns that this time she is going to buy a painting. So I have to decide if I will ask $10,000 (her nieces says I should and that she would probably pay that much) or if I will give her one just to see what she does.
    Guess what I am up to today? Yep, medical visits, but this time up to the Cities for an all-day one and not three.short ones here.

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    2. you are a bit like john forseyt h in trouble with harry but i encourage you to let people who enjoy your work buy a piece form you. 1000 may be in order, 10000 is to scare he off. 100 is to little 500 may be right but you really dont want to separate with them 1000 is possibly more than they are worth but you could be coerced into loosing your grips for a fooling reasonable amount.

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    3. Agreed. I want to hear the rest of this story.

      I can’t say I admire people like your “guest”, but I do often find myself wanting to have just a smidge more of whatever that is they have.

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  4. Morning all. I bought the house I currently live in because of “truth in real estate”. Back in the day — just when the real estate business was beginning to figure out how to do online, my wasband was employed by the company setting up the first online system in the Twin Cities. This meant he could see all the listings, even though at that time only the agents were supposed to be able to see them. We were actually looking for another house when my current house came up on the screen. It was the same size as several other “for sales” in the general neighborhood but listed at quite a bit less. Curiouslty drove us to look at the listing. It said things like “could be a jewel”, “imagine it with a fresh coat of paint”…. we’d never seen a real estate blurb quite like it. Then at the very end of the listing, it said “Agents, prepare your buyers as house does not show well.” We called our agent immediately so we could see the house – just to see how terrible it had to be to get written up like that. And it was truly awful, but it was all surface awful. We could see that beneath the immense clutter was a good house with features we liked. The rest is history!

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  5. I wish there was a clause that in addition to disclosing whatever about the house, there would be disclosure about the owners themselves, particularly their skill, or lack of it, in home repair. We bought our house from a guy who had all these great ideas that he tried to implement himself and that have turned out to be really dumb and have cost us trying to redo them.

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  6. Truth in drugs statement: I started a drug yesterday, a mild pain-reliever, that lists as a side effect feelings of contentment or even euphoria. Now that is truth-telling. I tried one last night. didn’t get to euphoria, but I think I better be careful with it.

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        1. What makes it “exaggerated”? If a medication is supposed to relieve pain, and it works, and you feel better, maybe that’s a perfectly justified sense of well-being or contentment.

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  7. I think Click and Clack have covered this exact question of how much ‘truthiness’ to disclose repeatedly on various episodes of Car Talk.

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  8. “This correlated well with our behavioral results and lends support to the hypothesis that high-fat/ high-sugar foods are addictive,” said Schroeder.

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    1. you know sometimes this kind of stuff bjust brings tears to my eyes. how cool is it that a guy can sit down and figure out how to make a box with some strings on it do this? life is for celebrating and steve goodman did it as good as anybody. thanks pj
      no lie.

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      2. He did, didn’t he, tim. He definitely did not have the gene that predisposes you to see negatively on things. Though they haven’t discovered it yet, I suspect he had an overabundance of the gene that makes you see the best in every situation.

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  11. i must have been doing it wrong. every time i tried snorting oreos they burned so bad i couldnt do the whole line. one cookie makes a really big line and if you dont crush em up real fine the hurt like hell

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