Apartment Life

Loud music, strange smells, pounding dumpster emptying semi trucks, community mail box setup, gross pools, paying to do the laundry, the list goes on and on. Apartment life is unlike any other experience there is. You cram many different people from different walks of life into one building or a group of buildings close together and then watch them co-exist.

There is the strange neighbor: he stands outside his car, holding his clothes and revolver that resembles something from a comic book super hero, while he talks on the phone is his spandex bikini briefs. His conversation is louder than you would need to be if you were standing in the subway. He waves as you walk by to get into the safety of your apartment, as if this is normal. Everyone holds thier clothing while they stand next to thier car in thier underwear. And by the way, he is over 40, not exactly an underwear model, and has very odd conversations about some very odd people he knows.

There is the angry neighbor: she sulks by with her laundry basket weekly, giving everyone and everything a dirty look, as if they caused her bad day. She never smiles and never talks to anyone. You imagine she has 40 cats living with her in the one bedroom top level unit she rents.

There is the loud neighbor: she sits outside on her patio waiting for the next unsuspecting person to walk by on thier way in or out, and then yells down to them to inquire about thier life and tell them all about her life whether they want to hear it or not. Oddly enough when people walk by after the first encounter they are always on the phone. Apparently they have learned how to get around her forward intentions.

Then we have the litter bug neighbor: this person is also the "my dog's poop can stay there as long as I want" neighbor. One day he was driving through the complex and every two feet he dropped a paper napkin or cup out his window. From the second he went through the main entrance until he winds his way all the way to his unit in the back. First question is: why? Second question is: where did all that trash in the car come from? Third question is: does his brain ever kick in? This person also walks thier dog and leaves the dog's poop laying in the middle of the walkway that you have to use to get from your building to the parking area. He also parks in the "no parking" area anytime he feels like it, making it difficult to get out to your car. He parks in other people's assigned areas and then argues with them as if his point matters when they get mad at him for taking the spot they pay extra for. As if he will win that argument.

There are many other neighbor descriptions that fit into various categories as well, but lets move on to the little things that make apartment life more interesting. New Year's Ever is always special in an apartment complex. One year we woke up to someone pounding on our door. The person was trying to get in, what they thought was thier unit. They kept trying to get a key in our lock, kept wanting us to let them in, as we argued through the door that this was our home, not thiers. They finally looked up to see the number in thier drunken stupor and then fell back up the stairs to the parking lot to try again. The next morning we went out to take out the trash and found empty plastic sandwich bags and lighters strewn about the stairs. One bag however was not empty, it was full of something resembling oregano, a large quart size bag of Oregano. Of course it wasn't Oregano, and it promptly went in the dumpster with the trash. A few months later a guy needed to use a cell phone, so we let him use ours and he told us about a wild party he had on New Year's and how he had lost a large bag of "weed". We just smiled and let him keep talking.

There was also the night a friend came in from out of town and brought in a long very odd looking Knife, he found it outside our window when he was walking up to our door. Nice little thing to know people are carrying around or dropping.

There is never a dull moment when you put that many people in one area to live.