This is the fourth (and hopefully final) post in a series of personal stories about how my parents’ house has some really bad luck.

I want to bring the curse house series to an end with a short and amusing story. It was Thanksgiving a decade or so ago. We were at my parents’ house and had just finished eating. When the phone rang, my sister got up to answer it. The caller was asking for my other sister, so Jennifer brought the phone into the dining room. (Kids, this is when people had landlines and cordless phones.)

She stepped into the dining room and CRACK! I felt the floor drop out from under me. It’s hard to say exactly how much, but it was enough to notice and be very worried that I was about to fall into the cellar.

What happened was that the metal pole under the floor joist had finally rusted away after many years and several cellar floods. Jennifer stepped in just the right place at the right time to break it. Fortunately, the house held together well enough that Dad and I could grab a 4-by-4 and use it to support the floor.

But all of these years later, we still tease Jennifer about how she broke the house.