As you open the white door that takes you down to the dark room underground, you stop for a minute to feel the wall for the light switch. After feeling the cement wall a bit, you eventually find the switch and turn it on ‘clic’. The little dust fluffs floating in the air around you are joined by a musty smell making you want to sneeze and suddenly, achoo!!!, you sneeze. It’s the perfect place to tell a scary story. You make your way down the stairs holding on to the light brown railing and the light purple wall. At the bottom, you look up at the drop-down ceiling. If you hit one, ‘clunk’ a pound of dust will fall over you. ‘Creak’, the thin grey carpet underneath your feet makes a creaky sound with just about every step you take. To the right at the bottom of the stairs, is a three switch for the lights: one for the little light at the bottom of the stairs, one for the purple room and the third for the faded yellow room.

The big light purple room that looks like a baby grape breaks off to different rooms has a dark green sofa that looks like it’s seen better days. The sofa leans against a wall. Directly above the sofa is a windowsill with no glass. It displays the next room over. In front of that wall is a basket used to hold thousands of cables. A door leading to a room with a vacuum cleaner storage container at the end of that wall. On the other side of the lilac-colored room, you have a painted black rectangle that is used as your blackboard. Three white shelves are attached to that wall all holding different things. One a box holding your chalk, but not just any chalk, Crayola chalk. Another holding momentos from kindergarten graduation. The third that holds a piggy bank that never gives back your money, that you made back at one of your art classes. Against the wall that joins the two sides of the room together sits a flat-screen TV with a case underneath that holds a white Wii, an Xbox, a DVD player, a VCR player that’s as old as the dinosaurs and a satellite receiver. On the floor to the right of the case is a black speaker in the shape of a cube. To the right of the black cube, there is a shelf that holds your collection of video games, movies and CDs. In front of that shelf are an army of paint cans left over from renovations. To the left of the TV, there is a stand that was once used to hold a fish tank and fish supplies but is now filled with a wasteland of random stuff like mini hockey sticks, balls, Nerf guns, mats for the Wii and cat and dog toys. In the middle of the room between the sofa and the TV, stands is a long low brown table holding instructions on how to work with the TV that were especially designed for your mom. Leaning against the stairs that would lead you back to civilisation is an electronic piano, an electric guitar as white as snow, an amp black as the night and a drawer that holds some art supplies. Above the drawer is a picture of your brother’s soccer team all in yellow jerseys that looked like dandelions. Your dad was also in the picture since he was one of the coaches.

Finally, the room to the left at bottom of the stairs is a storage room with two refrigerators, a shelf with canned goods and other foods and a bunch of travel bags, suitcases and baby stuff. We also use that room to store holiday and party decorations.

Walking back into the light purple room, follow the well worn path between the instruments and the sofa, a big frame takes you to the next room, this room is a faded yellow that resembles summer dying. When you look to the right, you see the treadmill facing a smaller TV attached up on a wall. It sits next to a built-in bookcase with even more movies, books and CDs. To the left of the treadmill is a desk, you start up the world’s slowest laptop and hear: ‘screech’. That you haven’t used years and a fun dark blue spinny chair. Above that is the sole window that’s just above ground level, trying its hardest to let in some natural light and barely succeeding to illuminate the room. The windowsill is used to hold three trophies, two for car races and one for soccer. A foosball table takes up a large part of the room, being used to its full potential holding some light workout equipment, some clothes and some little toys. Another bookshelf turning to the left side of the room, you catch sight of holding some board games, a bunch of old university textbooks used by your parents and brother and some other books that have no real purpose. On the wall next to the bookcase hangs a picture of your mom from either her high school or her university graduation.

In the beginning of a long but short hallway, there’s a light switch to help guide your way down. Venturing down takes you to a dark and gloomy room, the furnace room of your nightmares. It’s a room you haven’t ventured into for many years and probably won’t likely do so any time in the future. On the left, exiting the furnace room, there stands a door with a single light switch on the right. This door leads to a washroom that is rarely used because of its location. The light switch is found outside in the hallway. However, even though the washroom is small, there is still a small cubicle shower, a toilet and a small sink. Going back down that hallway to the left, you walk into the room with the foosball table and to the right at the end of the hall are two more rooms. One room facing you after the turn that’s always locked and another room to the right we like to call “the war room.”

The war room is just a room that your dad uses to work on projects. On top of the door frame is a metallic pull-up bar that’s as cold as a ice. There’s a desk with a lamp, a magnifying glass, a lighter and other tools on it. There’s a dresser on the left of the desk filled with padlocks and keys. There are some more paint cans and painting supplies in the back of the room to the left. There are also some stuff left over from when your dad was in the army, counting down the days for another war to break out.

Therefore, if there was ever a World War III, everything you’d need is in that room. It’s also used to hold your ringette, soccer and ski equipment while waiting for the season to start. There’s a closet in the back of the room on the right used to store your little Christmas tree and some more Christmas decorations. Not to mention you have a dresser in there with enough padlocks and keys to secure a prisoner. The inside of the locked door with no knob is shaped like a triangle and holds a safe and a bunch of weights to workout with. There’s pretty much nothing too exciting in there. That is the grand tour of my basement.