When the late Aaron Spelling built his 56 thousand square foot, 6 acre, estate home in Holmby Hills, California he was asked why he choose to build a 56 thousand square foot home, to which he responded that it was because the White House was 55 thousand square feet.

The house which has 123 rooms one of which is used to just store wrapping paper is a symbol of the American Dream. It’s a symbol that in this country, a person can grow up in poverty and through hard work obtain extreme levels of wealth and rise to the highest levels of our society.

Which is ironic because big houses ruin families.

I grew up in a small house with one television in the living room. My sister and I fought all the time. We locked ourselves in our rooms and refused to come out, always convinced that if we just stayed in there forever, that one of us would eventually cave and the other would win the argument.

That usually lasted an hour. And then injured and bored, we’d find ourselves in the living room, on opposite ends of the couch, watching TV. By the start of the first commercial break we were fighting again, and by the end of the show, the problem was resolved.

Problems don’t get resolved in big houses. They get amplified.

Big houses might look beautiful on the outside, but once inside, they make no sense. The maze of rooms insures that family members can continuously avoid each other until little arguments have evolved into thousands of dollars of therapy, depression, and self medication.

Of course this is America. Land of Dreams. Land of Opportunity. Land of Broken Families.

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