Do you have a friend who is a perfectly nice person- except for one little thing? Maybe they're a member of a political party you detest, or they love big smelly dogs when you're a cat person. One of my friends- a really, really nice lady married to a great guy- did something about a year ago I cannot fathom: she bought a McMansion. I love her and her husband anyway, but the house and its neighborhood are another matter entirely.

Visiting the house is a little creepy, if you want to know the truth. First, the development it's in is built on the grave of a 1950's subdivision I knew and loved. The lots used to be a half-acre to an acre in size, and the houses were low, modern, and rambling, set far back from the street.

Unfortunately, the old subdivision was one of the first to be built here in Atlanta; what was out in Timbuktu in the old days is now close-in, prime property. Big Money decided the area was ripe for redevelopment; redevelopment has, indeed, occurred.

You should see it all now. The trees are largely a thing of the past, and so are the curving streets. The lots- well, they're lots smaller now. The biggest change is the houses themselves. Mid-Century houses tended to be a great balance of the private and the public. Each of the old houses had plenty of green space around it, but the large windows gave passersby a sense of interior life. You could tell when people were at home, and when they were likely to welcome an impromptu visit. Lord, is it different today.

Today, you approach Jolly Acres (a name I made up, because the real one would probably get me sued) by a main gate, manned 24/7 by a security guard. Your name must be on the guard's list, or you're not getting in. The old neighborhood existed for over forty years with no murder or mayhem, but the new residents are taking no chances. Fork over some I.D., buddy.

Once you are inside (passing security cameras and motion-detectors galore along the way), you can, finally, see the house my friends live in. In fact, you can't miss it. Nearly three thousand square feet of house are squeezed onto a lot barely a quarter-acre in size; this stuccoed behemoth is not only built nearly to the lot lines, it seems to hang over them. It's too bad houses can't be dosed with Di-Gel; bloated is the only word for the overall effect. If this were the only house in the area like this, it might be excusable, but all the others are exactly the same: huuuuuge house, tiiiiiny lot. These houses go for nearly half a million each, and the people in them live six feet from their neighbors.

The houses try for turn-of-the-century charm- last century's. There are dormers and turrets and corner quoins, gingerbread and stained glass and coach lamps galore. In their quest for an 'old-timey' feeling, the designers have mixed styles and periods with mad abandon; I'm particularly bemused by one house that has Georgian corner quoins on its stuccoed lower story, a half-timbered Queen Anne upper floor, and Victorian windows with stained-glass curlicues- flanked by Colonial shutters. Brick driveways and picket fences abound, but I can see more motion-sensitive cameras under those scalloped eaves. Meet me in Saint Looey, Looey- I'll leave your name with Security.

The ungepatchkes charm of the houses is spoiled by one feature dictated by the pocket-handkerchief-sized lots: there's a two-car garage on the front of every blessed one of them. There isn't the barest pretense at concealment or at making the garage part of an overall design- it isn't possible. Put the garage in the back? There IS no back; the deck there is four feet away from another house's deck. The side? Yeah, right, like you could fit a garage in where there's barely room for a bicycle. The front it is, as it has to be.

I've been looking forward to seeing my friends for a while now; they haven't been so available lately as they once were. In fact, in the year since they moved to Jolly Acres, I haven't seen them at all; this is my first visit there. Walking up the steps, I reflect on what I know of their circumstances. Thanks to their dream house, they have four hundred thousand dollars' worth of mortgage hanging over their heads. That dreadful garage contains his Lexus and her Suburban. There's furniture and computers and cell phones and a Sub-Zero fridge inside the house. They have two kids who get the Good Life, too. To pay for all this, they work upwards of sixty hours a week each. They have to.

My friends greet me; they seem tired, which I can understand. But they're proud of their new house, and they and their kids begin to show it off to me. The foyer is a profusion of stained glass (the front door, its sidelights and fanlight) and brass (damn near everything else, including touches of it in the moldings). The floor is marble. Off to the left is the living room, which is dark; my friends never go in there except on holidays. However, this is the Grand Tour, so they switch on the lights briefly, so I can see. What I see is a lot of off-white carpet, bare Levelor blinds, and not a whole lot of furniture; they are in too much hock to do whatever it is they want to do, I can tell. The dining room adjoins; this is more graciously furnished with a mammoth golden-oak table and pressed-oak chairs, all of which are blindingly varnished, if a bit dusty. There's more off-white carpet, which was obviously a bad idea, because there are spots and stains underneath every chair.

Finished with the formal rooms, we go on to where the family actually lives, the Great Room. Great Rooms were an idea of Frank Lloyd Wright's, but I suspect his ghost feels the idea has gone astray. This room is huge, but it's crammed. There is a sectional sofa that has recliners built into it; the recliners have armrests with cup holders, just like the Lexus and the Suburban. There is a computer desk where a twenty-one-inch monitor glows with the AOL Welcome screen. And there is the damndest TV set I ever saw. I love TV, but I've never considered having a set with a sixty-inch screen. My friends beam proudly when they see me looking at it, slack-jawed. I'm glad they can't see it's not envy; it's amazement at seeing Heather Locklear's head five feet tall. The TV is part of what my friends call a 'media center', which is basically lots of pressed-wood shelving containing tons of sound equipment and CD's and DVD's. They love it, it's plain to see. A table built into the sectional sofa bristles with remotes; all this stuff is theirs to command. The coffee table has an imposing collection of take-out and delivery menus; pizzas, Chinese, you name it.

We move on to the kitchen, which is actually rather charming. The cabinets are golden oak, and the no-wax floor's simulation of tile is not too bad, since the lights are low. This is definitely the most expensive room in the house; there's the Sub-Zero fridge and Wolf range and Miehle dishwasher Martha Stewart says you must have, and the Corian people obviously did well for themselves with the profits off the faux-granite counters. There's everything you need for cooking, but it's easy to see no cooking to speak of is done here; there's a jumble of mail on the planning desk, but no other signs of use. My friends are paying a pretty penny for all this luxe, but I can see the sixty-hour work weeks that fund their mortgage leave them no time to enjoy it. Of course, this also explains the lavish selection of take-out menus in the Great Room.

The bedrooms are the last stop on the tour, and I can see they were intended to be wonderful. The master bedroom is actually a master suite, with his and hers dressing rooms and a zoned bath. The bath is extremely elaborate, with lots of brass and marble, none of which is what it seems. The 'marble' is actually marble dust mixed with a plastic binder, and the brass has the glitzy shine that comes from being heavily lacquered. It is all meant to have an old-time charm, but I honestly see nothing charming in it- it's a synthetic, curlicued nightmare.

My friends tell me the kids' rooms are equipped with their own baths, but that the rooms are not presentable for guests, and the kids cheerfully concur. Again, my wonderment sets in, but then I remember these parents have no time or energy to play Room Police, the way my parents did. The rooms are down a long hall anyway, and it's clear that they are in another world, one off-limits to grown-ups, even the ones who fund the house. I can see how kids turn up with guns in school, if no one can even find the time to say Clean Up Your Room. I reflect that anything could be down that hall, and my friends would never know. The kids' rooms are far away from theirs. My friends are tired from paying for all this. They're stressed and distracted. And they're seldom home.

My friends and I had agreed this would be a short visit; we're all busy people. I cast about for something nice to say about the house; it's not easy, because I don't like it, or anything about it. Finally, I think of something positive: It'll be a great investment, I tell them. They beam, and bid me farewell, telling me, We have it All, the House of Our Dreams. It's really Something, isn't it?

I drive off, not neglecting to check out with Security, and my drive home is filled with thoughts of how I lived as a child, and live now- and I compare it with what I've just seen. I grew up in 1100 square feet of Mid-Century tract house with three bedrooms and one bath. There was a full acre to play on. We ate in a dining area that was part of the kitchen. The kitchen was used three times a day, and we all pitched in to produce, eat, and clean up after each meal. We knew each other intimately; the house was large enough for decent people to have privacy, but too small for secrets. The bedrooms were for sleeping, not for avoiding other family members. One 21-inch TV was shared among five people; we got to vote on program choices sometimes and sometimes my dad, as family breadwinner, commandeered the set. It would never have occurred to any of us to question his right to do so; his forty hours a week on his job funded all we had. Mom was home nearly all the time, and she knew our moods, needs, wants, and what we thought were our secrets better than we did. We were not a perfect family, God knows, but we were a family, because we had the time to be one.

My friends? They have a crushing workload. They have no time for themselves, no time for one another. They 'own' three-quarters of a million dollars' worth of stuff that isn't paid for and that they have no time to enjoy or take care of. Their kids are raising themselves. They think they own a house, but it really owns them.

But what the hell. They have it All. And yes, it's really Something.