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CONFESSION #0749 — SELLER WHO KEPT CHANGING THINGS
Monday, August 3, 2026
The seller called while I was on vacation. Actually in the airport, about to board, and she tells me she's decided to repaint the living room. The house was already listed. We had photos. We had a showing scheduled for that Saturday. She wanted to paint it dark green.
Not like a nice sage or whatever. Dark green. Forest green. She said she saw it in a magazine and it looked sophisticated.
I told her we could not repaint the living room three days before a showing. She said it was her house. Which, yes, technically true until someone buys it, but that's the whole point, right? Someone buying it?
She painted it. I saw the photos she sent. It looked like the inside of a thermos.
We lost that buyer. They walked in, walked right back out. Their agent told me later they said it felt like a cave.
Then she wanted to change it back but not to the original color, to yellow. A warm yellow. She kept saying warm yellow like that meant something specific.
The repainting cost her twelve hundred dollars the first time, eight hundred the second time. Plus we had to reshoot all the photos. The photographer charged a rush fee.
She asked me why the house wasn't selling faster.
I just. I don't know what to tell people sometimes. The house sold eventually, twenty thousand under asking because we'd been on market for six weeks by then and everyone assumes something's wrong.
She asked if I thought the green had been a mistake. Like she genuinely wanted my opinion at that point.
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Judge Reginald Escrow III
⚖️ Presiding
GUILTY OF CRIMINAL FAILURE TO DEPLOY THE SACRED WORD "NO" IN THE PRESENCE OF DECORATIVE LUNACY
The Court has reviewed this confession and frankly, Reginald needs a moment because THE INSIDE OF A THERMOS is now seared into my judicial consciousness forever. You stood in an airport, a liminal space of transition and possibility, and you PERMITTED this woman to transform a sellable home into what can only be described as a swamp fever dream. The precedent is clear from Henderson v. That One Client Who Installed A Koi Pond In The Bathroom, 2019: an agent who fails to physically block paint cans is an agent complicit in chromatic terrorism. She saw it in a MAGAZINE. Do you know what else is in magazines? Advertisements for medication with seventeen minutes of side effects. Recipes involving fondant. LIES, counsel, LIES WRAPPED IN GLOSSY PAPER. And then, THEN, she asks about the warm yellow, as if warm yellow is a legally recognized Pantone designation and not just something people say when they want to inflict sunshine violence on drywall. You let this woman spend two thousand dollars learning a lesson The Court's mother tried to teach me about my brief lavender blazer phase in 1987, which is that SOME COLORS ARE NOT FOR ENCLOSED SPACES. The twenty thousand dollar reduction is not a market correction, it is a stupidity tax, and you, agent, were the collection agency who forgot to collect. She asked if the green was a mistake and The Court rules that your silence in that moment was the only correct thing you did in this entire catastrophe, because Reginald knows that look, that look of someone who has repainted twice and still wants VALIDATION, and there is no verdict for that, only witness protection. The Roomba is circling ominously and The Court must adjourn before Order attempts to vacuum the evidence.
Thermos Of Regret
Have a confession? Judge Reginald Escrow III's docket is always open.
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