HOUSE RULES: No thinking small!

When I was little, my friends and I were devoted to the playhouse in Elaine Weber’s backyard. It was small. Mildewy. Plain. No turrets. But Elaine, Christine, Eddie, and I spent entire summers in there, pretending to run a “business” called BS&B (short for Bullshit & Barf). The only thing BS&B manufactured were BS&B stamps, which we used to send each other letters crammed with back-stabbing, inter-office gossip. We were hardworking petty gossips and obsessive stamp crafters. We certainly didn’t have time to maintain our playhouse’s landscaping (it had none) or polish its windows (it had two).

Things have changed. Some of the playhouse options available for today’s perfect children boast zero modesty. Take the two-story Victorian pink model pictured above. At 10-by-18 feet, it would rent for $2000/month in mid-town Manhattan. Here’s my favorite part of the sale pitch: “The Do-It-Yourself Victorian Mansion comes with double adult doors at the back, making it more practical for storage after the kids grow up.”

Yes, so practical! What better spot to house your leaf-blower than the place where your son or daughter developed distorted real-estate expectations. And later hid in so you couldn’t drag them off to Japanese flower-arranging lessons.