5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Let The Dukes in Your House

We Dukes fancy ourselves as honorable fellows, but there are a few situations where we are not to be trusted. I have highlighted in the past why ladies shouldn't trust us and today I want to warn all our potential friends out there of another one of our terrible habits. We make terrible house guests. You may be thinking to yourself "harrumph. I have had The Dukes over many times and nothing has gone wrong." If that is the case I say to you just wait. Your time will come. You are more likely to stop the inexorable march towards death than stop what is coming at our hands. It will be an accident (probably). We will feel sorry for it (possibly), but here are five reasons why The Dukes should not be let in your house.

We straight up stomped that house to its death.

1. Zac has a vendetta against decks

I don't like decks and I don't trust decks. They are wobbly and unstable and they want to murder me. Also they are a lot of work. "Look at me I need to be water proofed and stained every year so I look good. If you don't I will succumb to some sort of rot and look less than awesome Mwahahaha!!" They are jerks and must be dealt with. We have been feuding for years but our battle recently came to a head.

We had had an enjoyable afternoon swimming and we needed to kill some time before we went to our dinner reservation.  We decided that we would spend this time lounging at a friend's house. The scene was idyllic. The sun was shining high, as were our spirits. There was much frolicking and jumping on of tramps. We were ready for a breather so we decided to head into the house by way of a staircase/deck combo that led us to the second floor. With the feelings I have towards decks I should have thought this though and gone in through the front door, but I decided to spit in the face of fate and she decided to strike back. 

I had managed to navigate the staircase and I was feeling invincible. In a weak moment of false immortality I took my gaze from my foot placement and there I met my downfall. One misplaced step and my hefty weight met a weak board and I felt myself falling.  Oh dark hubris why did you bring upon me this fate!? Why couldn't I have just looked down?! There is some good that comes from this tale. As it turns out I have the reflexes of a highly trained ninja. As I found the floor of the deck rushing up to meet me I managed to throw out my hands and catch myself as my knee was passing the floorboards. If that hadn't happened I would have ended up on a concrete slab one level below. Sadly I did not make it entirely unscathed.

Drink it in.

Touché deck you win this round, but a warning to all of my friends out there with decks I will have my revenge!


2.  We will take any opportunity we can to scare or surprise you.


This shouldn't be a shocker but we Dukes can be jerks and we will scare you whenever and however we can. When Danny and I worked at the bank together we were terrible most of the time. Danny once jumped out at a very pregnant lady while dressed as the Hulk. He didn't even know her yet since he was still in training. I made a girl hit her head on the underside of a counter because I decided to sneak up behind her(I still feel bad about that). Letting us into your home is just inviting us to find new ways to frighten you. 

Look at those sadistic grins

One great example involves our good friend Morgan (who has not been replaced). She invited us to her home and was a gracious host. In return we managed to get the keypad combo to her door just so we could scare her. We had been told that she was on her way home and that we should meet her there at 7. Instead of doing as we were told we decided to go early to set up shop. We got there at 6:30 and we entered the home. Her dog Gracie greeted us at the door as old friends and we started to plot.

In order to help you understand the story you need some background. Morgan is afraid of finding random people in her hotel room, bedroom, bathroom etc. We knew this and decided to play on that fear. We hunkered down in the living room, turned off the light and began to wait. Soon we could see headlights coming off in the distance. We heard the car door shut and her shoes began to clack against the pavement, marking her approach. Her frame darkened the doorway and she slowly began unlocking the door. The door swung open and we could see her silhouetted there. Mustering up my best devil voice, I growled from the darkness "Welcome Home".

Morgan responded with one classic line, "Oh Sh*t". She sounded so forlorn, as if all hope had been lost. She knew that this was going to be the end of the road for her. (At least I imagine that is what she was thinking) Sadly the moment was ruined by us because we all began to giggle. I don't know if we will ever top that scare but I also don't know if Morgan will ever truly forgive us either.

3. The Dukes + Furniture = Disaster

We are incredibly hard on furniture. Part of it is the fact we use it so much, but another part is that we apparently don't know how to use it like adults either.

This is how you use one of these, right?

No one has felt the sting of our poor furniture etiquette more than my own parents. A few years back I went through a strange furniture buying kick. I still lived at home but apparently I wanted to have more stuff. During one of these stuff getting quests I ended up purchasing a couch for the man cave. It was one I looking forward to sitting on quite a bit. Unfortunately (mainly for my parents) the couch did not fit down the stairs, but being such good people my parents said "take our reclining couch downstairs instead. We will leave your couch up here in the family room in its place." Bad move Mom and Dad.

For the first little while it seemed like a dream come true. We could fit all four Dukes on the one couch, or four of anybody if we had company. We would watch movie after movie and life was good. Gradually I think that we as a whole began to forget who the couch belonged to and we treated it as our own. The first casualty was the back left corner. Danny really liked to lean back on whatever piece of furniture he was sitting in, but with this couch it just caused it to break after a time. This was no biggie though. We just propped up the corner with a tub, a piece of particle board, and an exercise ball (take that Macgyver).

We were trucking along just fine after this minor speed bump until a late night movie led to a late night pinch war that involved Coombsy, Danny, McKell and I (Ricky is super glad that he wasn't a part of this one). The pinches were brutal and somehow it led to the destruction of one of the leg rests (I am looking at you Coombsy). Once again we managed to pull together a last minute solution, in this case we used a small garbage can to prop up the leg rest. I think you are a smart readership so I am pretty sure you can figure out what happened next. If you guessed that gypsies did it, you have been talking to me way too much.  So in the end the couch died a slow death at the hands of the people who had professed to love it.

So you know, be careful when people love you.

4. Once we have access to your house we may never leave

      
At times we Dukes have been compared to parasites, and sadly that isn't far from the truth. If we find something we like we will attach ourselves to it and we will only let go when that thing has died, become broken or completely lost its function. This attachment can happen with pretty much any noun you can think of, and woe be unto that person, place or thing.

Early in the life of our friendship we were constantly at Ricky's house. We were there a minimum of three times a week. Ricky's parents are great people, but I think after a few months of this they went on vacation just so they wouldn't have to see us anymore. Did the fact that Ricky and his family had gone on vacation change how often we were at his house? No it did not. If anything we were there even more since Danny had been asked to house sit. The only thing that changed was the time of night we finally went to bed and the amount of joyrides we took in vehicles we did not own (we only went on one in Ricky's old van).

This just goes to show you that even fleeing the state isn't enough to get rid of us. We will be waiting right where you left us when you return so we can continue to suck the life out of you.

5. We mark our territory

This doesn't mean that if we enter your house we will make like dogs and start peeing on things (I can't promise that Coombsy won't though), it just means that we will start leaving traces of ourselves in your house. Once again I will bring up Morgan. If you go in her house you will be able to find a copy of our main page photo. She didn't ask for it, but we decided she needed it. It was our effort to claim her home as our own. You never know when we will strike or what form our claim will take, just that it will happen.

Coming soon to inside your house.

 In summation it is clear that we are adorable and the epitome of awesomeness, but you need to decide for yourself if we are really worth all the trouble we cause. If you decide we are not I may cry myself to sleep but I won't begrudge you your well-reasoned opinion. If you decide to toss the dice and stick it out I pray that our visits turn out better than it did for this Brazilian family whose home I tore down with my bare hands.

Just think of it as an extended camping trip