Does my house have 7 floors?

Written on 17th Jun 2021 by Alex Lowery

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There is a true funny story from when I was 13 and I misunderstood language in Scouts. I told this story in my book but I recently discovered there’s a bit of the story missing. For years I was certain I had added it. I’m sure I even remember adding it but I didn’t see it when reading my book recently. I decided to tell the story again but this time in full. So please do read now.

When I was 13 I went to Scouts. I enjoyed Scouts but often struggled to fit in with the other kids my age. One day one of the scouts was trying to get to know me better and he asked me, “How many floors does your house have?” 

I said, “7” and he looked really amazed. “7 floors?” he said. “Yes,” I said.

He replied, “Wow, that’s amazing”. He went and told one of the others and he also was amazed – I guess they thought I was rich, living in a house with 7 floors!

When I had got back home, I remembered the question about the floors and it suddenly dawned on me that I had actually misunderstood the question. I saw the floor as the carpet because we often refer to the carpet as the floor so I thought he was asking how many carpets did my house have. 

I realised that what he meant was, “On how many floors was my house built?” I had completely misunderstood the question. I think it took me a while to process what he meant, but all I can say to that is, “No wonder they were so amazed!”

The awkwardness didn’t end here either. The next week of scouts shortly before we were leaving the same scout who asked me about the floors was continuing to tell the other scouts about my house. He told one of the other boys that I had 7 floors and this other boy came up to me asking in a shocked voice, “You have 7 floors???”

At this moment I did not know how I should respond. I felt too embarrassed to admit I had made a mistake and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself or to make them think I’m dumb. I also didn’t want to continue saying I had 7 floors because at this point it would be lying. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I just made a run for it! I just said “I gotta go” and left because I really didn’t want to have to respond. 

Thankfully no one asked me about this again. 

I hope you enjoyed reading this story. I still cannot believe that the last part wasn’t included in the book. I can’t get my head around it because I remember writing it. Maybe there was a bit missing in the final draft. I’m not sure but either way I felt it was necessary to add it to get the full story across.

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