Michael’s friends were encouraged by his enthusiasm when he called them out to a random address. Recently, Michael’s business partner wife left him without either. The two owned a bakery where they’d frosted everything together. Michael’s friends constantly worried about him with the bakery closed and his wife filing for divorce.
The brief optimism faded when they arrived at the address to find an empty lot with a mound of dirt and Michael sitting in the middle of it in a lawn chair.
“Hello friends, welcome to my new home!” Michael said gleefully. “Pull up a chair!”
His friends looked around but, seeing no chairs, decided to stand.
“Michael,” Carey said with some apprehension, “There is no house here.”
“You can’t see it?” Michael said with a laugh. “Of course, it’s not here yet. But I’m going to build it. It is going to be my place. No one can take that away from me.”
“You mean you’re going to hire someone to build a house,” Grant said as he kicked at several deserted prairie dog holes in the yard.
“No, I’m going to build it,” Michael said. “When I lost everything, I knew I needed my own place. This is the place. This will be my house.”
“Michael,” Simon said, “You owned a bakery. You’ve never built a house.”
“Not true, every Christmas….”
“Michael, those were gingerbread houses!” Carey yelled.
“I’ve done my research. It’s the same concept. I’ll put the boards together and then build around it!”
Michael’s friends started talking at once. The dam broke after months of tiptoeing around Michael’s worsening mental and emotional states, but Michael wouldn’t hear it. He pointed toward an imaginary front door. “I want you all out of my house!”
*****
Over the next several months, Michael didn’t talk to his friends. They drove by the lot when Michael was asleep in his tent in the yard.
Grant worried as Michael didn’t do anything to even the ground or build a foundation.
Carey was shocked when Michael seemed to be using giant graham crackers as walls with frosting to hold them up.
Simon felt the roof’s gum drop attachments would catch fire at the slightest spark. He even tried lighting some gumdrops on fire at home and learned that gumdrops melt instead of burn.
Inconceivably, Michael built the gingerbread house. It became a minor local news story with plenty of curiosity.
The friends decided to take Michael a welcome present to congratulate him on his new home. When they arrived, they found Michael with his head in his hands on a floor made out of jellybeans.
“What’s wrong?” Carey asked.
“It turns out I don’t want to live in a gingerbread house!” Michael said.
The group all tried not to laugh. Instead, they helped Michael up and took him out for pancakes. Michael slept on Simon’s couch that night and wondered why the place smelled like melted gumdrops.