She was a quirky client who wanted to see every available home in her price range. I was a newer agent who thought nothing of showing ten houses in a day (I know, crazy, right?).
We were on our ninth home, it was late afternoon, I was exhausted. When we entered the cluttered, tenant-occupied house, I just wanted to be done. There were three couches in the living room, two over-sized chairs, and a huge coffee table covered in pizza boxes filled with aging science experiments, a dozen or so beer bottles in varying degrees of empty, and a bong full of disgusting bong water (no, it wasn't legal in Colorado then).
We had to move sideways through the room to get to the kitchen and bedrooms. There was not one thing about it that fit my client's needs, but she wanted to see it anyway, so I went ahead of her opening doors and turning on lights. As I opened the bedroom door that connected to the living room, I flipped on the light.
The first thing I noticed were the bared teeth of a ferocious looking dog. My next conscious moment was when the dog who had been lying peacefully on the bed was now flying airborne toward me. To this day I couldn't tell you whether the dog was ten pounds or fifty, but as I jumped back to close the door between us (which I was, thankfully, able to do), my leg caught and sent me hurtling over the coffee table, sending the bong straight in the air. Twisting to catch it before it hit the carpet, I grabbed it with one hand and tried to brace myself with the other.
Lying flat on my back on a now-crushed pizza box and an unbroken bong in my fist, there was small victory in knowing I was agile enough to catch it before it hit the floor. But nothing my cajoling client could say would induce me to take her or my aching body to the next showing.
She ended up buying one of the houses we'd seen previously, anyway.
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