If You Lived Here...

So, one of wife's best friends lives in our apartment complex. We shall call her Dolly, because that is what we call her, although it in no way resembles her actual name. The complex we all live in is an odd creature. It's not a typical complex with five or six giant buildings. Instead, it is a smaller condo complex with 20 or so units. Each of these units are individually owned and most of the occupants are the actual owners who have owned these condos for twenty plus years. And when they bought these units they were probably forty, so add twenty years to that and you get a sense of the demographic around here. Then scattered amongst them are people like us; younger people who merely rent from the condo owner.

I'll say this upfront: living with a bunch of elderly people can be a good thing and a bad thing. For instance, they are all up in everyone's business. This is a bad thing when they are monitoring your recycling efforts and trying to disallow you from putting cardboard boxes in the recycling bin because they take up too much space. Why does it matter? Why make recycling so hard? However, their nosiness is a very good thing when you want to get the scoop on the happenings at the complex. They can always be relied on for that. For the most part, we've made good friends with all the older neighbors. They seem to like us pretty well. So much that on the day of our wedding, when I ran by the apartment to get something, I found a card taped to the door telling us congratulations and welcoming me to the complex. See? So nice.

And when I said that all the oldies could be counted on to tell you about the happenings around here, I wasn't kidding. There have been some serious happenings around here. Sometimes the neighbors fill us in, and sometimes the happenings happen to us. For example:

• There was an incident that may or may not have been some type of domestic dispute. I wasn't here for that one. All wife and Dolly know was there was a lot of yelling and lots of noises that sounded like glass breaking. The cops were called and I think they eventually decided that the neighbors in question were merely drunk as skunks and were taking their anger out by yelling and throwing things. Breakable things evidently. 
• Just the other week a car turned the corner by the complex and apparently lost control of his car. He ended up driving up on the yard and took out one of the fences that encloses one of the neighbor's patios. He then hit an AC unit on the other side of the fence and rendered that inoperational. Then he drove away. Evidently the crash was so loud that it woke up many of the neighbors on that side of the complex. Except us, who wake up for nothing. Not even for severe weather and tornado sirens. I half expect us to wake up one morning without a roof or with nothing in the apartment because we were robbed overnight and were none the wiser. Ah, sweet sleep.
• But see, that is not always true! We did wake up one night when a neighbor pounded on the door because she was locked out of her apartment. She was rather intoxicated, so we got to listen to drunken rambling while her friend brought her keys to her. Then, as I was telling this exact story to some friends later, she knocked on the door because she had done it again! She has now since given us a spare key.
• Okay, this story just has to be put out there all quick-like. An ex-boyfriend of one of the residents went into her apartment and superficially slit his wrists. I say superficially because I don't think the injuries were too major. Clearly he had some mental stuff going on and was depressed about her breaking up with him and wanted to get back at her. So he got taken away on a stretcher and the poor girl ended up moving out soon after that.

So, right after the wedding Dolly mentioned to me how there was this one car that had not moved in a long time. And this car belonged to the resident that we affectionately call Crack Whore. Now, I've never known a crack whore in real life, so I'm not sure if I should be allowed to say someone resembles a crack whore. However, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this lady has some issues. She is crazy skinny and always acts very shifty. She is at home weird times of the days and Dolly has seen her with some really shady companions. And I've seen her up close and tried to say something to her, and she was just really tweaky and acted weird. So, crack whore obviously.

Well, after Dolly mentioned the car thing to me, I started to notice that her car never moved. And since I am wrapping up a pretty easy semester, I really have nothing but time to obsess over whether or not Crack Whore moved her car. So day after day I would make sure to notice if her car was there. And then I would check on other things, like how dusty the car was, etc. And it never moved. And it was super dusty, despite all the rain we had. So we came up with a solution: Crack Whore had died.

But lo and behold, I drove into the parking lot the other day and guess who I saw. Crack Whore! She was at her car taking some stuff out of the trunk. I got out of my truck and smiled at her and she acted shifty and hurried inside. So, Crack Whore was alive, which is good and bad.

Good because she's not dead. Huzzah!

Bad because I wanted to petition for her parking spot. Boo!

So now the question is, where was she? We vote rehab. Dolly is convinced we are going to see her on A&E's Intervention soon. We can only hope. That's all this complex is missing: reality television.

See, isn't this complex crazy? It's like we live in Melrose Place or something, minus everyone sleeping with each other. Except for that one older couple we suspect are swingers. But that is another story for another time. 

Comments

[stace]

"Bad because I wanted to petition for her parking spot. Boo!"

we MUST be related! hahaha! excellent!