Invasion

Hubby and I have only moved apartments a few times in our life, but every time we've each had one non-negotiable request for deciding on a place to live.

Hubby's condition is that the apartment has to have good natural light. Mine is that it has to have a guest bedroom.

When I came to grips with the reality that I was going to settle down on the other side of the world, I knew that I would always want, nay, need, a place where my family, friends and loved ones could come visit and stay for as long as they wished without feeling uncomfortable. Over the years countless of our friends and family have accepted our invitation to come visit and this has brought us so much joy and happiness that I have never regretted the fact that we pay a little extra rent each month for the luxury of being able to provide them with their own space during their stay.

Until now.

Last Sunday we got a call from a friend of a friend in Paris asking us for a favor: the son of another friend had just arrived in London to do a 6 month internship and had discovered upon arrival that the apartment he'd thought he'd rented through an online agency, was actually a scam and nothing was in fact reserved or available. Our friend said that this kid (22 years) was basically out in the cold with his suitcases and without a place to go for the night and since she knew we had an extra bedroom she asked us if, as a special favor, we could put him up for a night or two while he found a new place.

I have to admit the request annoyed us a little bit as we'd never met this person (or his mother or her friend!) and we were already running late to meet our good friends Tara and Stuart for one last dinner before their move to Australia..... but of course we said yes. We waited for the kid to arrive (I'm just going to go ahead and call him the kid for the rest of the post if you don't mind), gave him a copy of our key, showed him where everything was, told him to feel at home and jumped in a cab to make it in time for dessert.

In retrospective we probably shouldn't have told him to feel at home.

Our understanding was that the kid only needed a night or two because he was in a hurry to find his own digs. However, almost immediately we realized that he was in fact in no hurry at all. Monday night we came back from work to find him lazily browsing the online adds to help him make up his mind on the neighborhoods he wanted to explore before he committed to looking there for a flat. Hubby told him that it was no use to look at online adds in London since most of the advertised places are already rented anyway and that his best option for finding something quick was to call an agency the next morning and set up a half day of apartment visits that afternoon which is the way things are done here (for the record, Hubby found our current place during the first half of the first day he started looking).

Tuesday we came home to find that he'd settled on a couple of agencies he was going to call the next day. Wednesday he'd found a place and was going to think about it for the night, Thursday the place of course had been rented out and he had to start from scratch again.

By this time, our patience had grown really weary. It wasn't only that we felt he was taking advantage of the free boarding and food he was getting from us, but mostly the fact that he was taking for granted that he could stay here for as long as he wished, without even bothering to ask us if we minded and in essence, he didn't need to pressure himself to find something quick. Each night we'd come home to hear a new excuse of why he hadn't found something yet ("the agency got our rdv times mixed up", "the place that the agent had set aside for me to visit was actually already rented out by another agency", "I had too much work today and couldn't step out to visit anything", "a friend of mine heard of something so we're going to go check it out tomorrow", "I'm thinking of checking out the student residences down the road tomorrow on my way to work"....etc).

I have to say that I would have tolerated all of this and much more if at least the kid had showed a little consideration towards this "invasion" of our home, but it was all the contrary! We had a couple of previous dinner engagements during the week and each time, we'd come home in the evening to find he'd randomly gone through our pantry, made himself dinner and left the pots in the sink. On the nights that Hubby cooked for us he didn't even offer to help wash up afterwards. And during his stay he kept the door to the bedroom closed without ever asking us if we needed anything from the room (which would have been nice considering Hubby's computer and all our books and DVDs are in there).

It's not like he was ever impolite or obnoxious, quite the contrary. On the whole he's a nice kid. He just seemed to assume that living with us was the same as living with his parents and that it was our duty to take care of him for as much and as long as he needed it. And that's what killed us.

By Wednesday we'd already told him that we were leaving to Mexico this weekend so he had to find something by Friday or else he'd have to go to a hotel. He kept saying "yeah, yeah, of course, don't worry, I'm doing [insert bogus excuse here] tomorrow and it's almost sure I'll have a signed lease by the end of the day"... by the time Friday morning came (this morning), we just rolled our eyes when he said he would keep us informed of how his apartment hunt went.

Sure enough, Hubby got a text this afternoon asking us if he could stay at our place while we were away ("he'd found something but wasn't getting the keys until late next week").... when Hubby said no he asked if he could at least leave his suitcases at our place (and therefore keep our key). Again Hubby firmly said that wasn't going to work out (we have friends coming to stay in our flat while we're away so we need the extra key). When Hubby got home after work, the kid hadn't yet packed and once again asked if we it really wasn't at all possible!

Fortunately for the kid I wasn't there when all this was going on.

Hubby kept a firm no and the kid finally admitted that he had a friend who'd offered to put him up while he waited for the apartment to be free.

When I got Hubby's text telling me he'd just put the kid in a cab and sent him on his way to his friend's house, I have to admit I let out a loud "Whooopeeee!!"

Now, the hard part. What would you have done in our place?

You see, despite this situation getting on our nerves in a gradually increasing level, every night Hubby and I would lie in bed and ask ourselves if we weren't being too harsh, or mean or non-understanding. We felt it was our duty to help him out, after all, I still remember how hard it was to find a place when I first arrived in Paris, (although the housing situation in London is waaaaaay more easier than Paris) but at the same time we felt he was openly taking advantage of us with no sign on his side of gratefulness or even realization of what he was asking from us. At times, we were even sure he was out right lying to us and that made us even more mad and indisposed to help him out.

I've thought long and hard if we would have reacted in this same way if this had happened to us 5 years ago. The thought has crossed my mind that maybe our cranky, inpatient and inflexible behavior is because we're slowly forgetting what it's like to be young and stupid and selfish and self-absorbed.

But at the same time, a part of me tells me that if you've got the guts to go out into the world and move to a foreign country you have to be mature and intelligent and strong enough to be able to take it when someone closes a door in your face, right?

What do you think ? Were we too harsh?

Photo: "San Francisco" by Hubby

Fned.