Home, Sweet Home

Earlier this week, the power in my room went out. You read that correctly -- just "my room," not the apartment. Although not without warning. This happens fairly frequently and it is never a surprise. I'm always forewarned of imminent power loss when I hear my roommate utter the following words: "Duy, just letting you know I'm about to use the microwave."

Generally, my response is a sigh of resignation followed meekly by, "Ok, thanks." Over the next 5 minutes or so, I then sit waiting patiently for the inevitable. And I wonder what electrical engineering devilry could allow the use of the microwave to short out my half of the apartment? And before I can come to a conclusion, I'm left in darkness. It seems where ever I live, I will find some sort of oddity/inconvenience that depreciates the place that might otherwise seem perfect to suit my needs.

In college, it was having two roommates in a single bedroom -- that was enough to dilute the grandeur of living on my own. When I moved to a suite on campus, the University of Florida department of transportation and parking decided that students don't actually need parking spaces next to their dorm, so what initially was the convenience of an automobile at my disposal became an unused heap of metal with which pigeons might partake in target practice. But I think I encountered, by far, the most powerful force of devaluing an apartment in the summer of 2003, right after I graduated College.

5551 Stanford Rd. seemed like a decent enough place--it was spacious, very affordable, and seemed perfect for a young urban professional starting out on his own. Things were going swimmingly until I met the down stairs neighbor, an older woman, probably in her forties and most-likely unemployed. She often sat by the front porch chain-smoking cigarettes. And by "often," I mean, "all the time." The Cigarette Smoking Woman (or CSW, for short) smoked so much that the smell seeped from the front porch into the shared stairwell up to my room. You've heard of the "Halls of Medicine," right? Well, CSW created the antithetical manifestation of that. But that wasn't the worst part.

The floor of the apartment, I assume, was poorly insulated and as a result, noise was easily transmissible from her apartment to mine. I often heard screams of anger coming from the floor below. It was not English. I don't think it was any language spoken by man. It was her own dialect and it freaked the Hell out of me. Then one night, I witnessed probably one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in person.

I was awoken in the middle of the night by someone yelling outside--intense, angry yelling. I can't recall exactly what was said, but I do remember it was in fact English, this time, and incredibly profane. This is essentially what I heard . . . "GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" "STOP DOING THAT!" "IF YOU DON'T STOP I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!!" Oh, shit, I thought, CSW is going to kill someone. I immediately got out of bed and went over to the window--the screams were coming from outside. I looked out and saw CSW pointing angrily as she yelled . . . at a cat. The cat seemed un-fazed, as though it had been through this before.

While I didn't think at this point she was really a threat to anyone, she still continued to scream obscenities at the cat, who sat calmly, licking itself. I had to get to sleep so I decided to call 911 . . . in retrospect, I should have just looked up the number for the local police, but in my state of mind, I considered being sleep-deprived a personal state of emergency.

"911, what is your emergency?," the operator said. I froze for a second trying to figure out how I was going to explain the situation.

"Um, this isn't particularly an emergency, but there is a woman outside my apartment and she's sort of . . . yelling a lot . . . at a cat. Oh, and threatening to kill it."

"Can I have the location?"

"5551 Stanford Rd. And like I said, I'm not sure if this is a realy emergency since I don't think she's going to actually hurt anyone, but you might want to get a cop out here to see if she's ok." Yeah, that was good, I thought... I'm just trying to make sure this crazy woman is ok.

"Ok, I'll dispatch someone to your location right away. Would you like to talk to the police officer when he arrives?" I really didn't . . . I just wanted to go back to sleep.

"Um . . . No, that's ok. Just have him make sure C-S--er--the lady is ok." I'm not sure why she asked me whether or not I wanted to talk to him if the cop was going to knock on my door anyway. He arrived shortly, and I peeked out the window as the woman started back into her apartment when she saw the cop get there. Nothing happened to her, he just talked to her a bit and I don't really know what was said because when he knocked on my door, I pretended I was fast asleep.

CSW would continue to be a major contributor to my experience at that apartment complex, as that wasn't the only time she would be caught screaming at her cat (or at nothing in some instances). At the end of my lease, I had decided to move out. And when I did, the landlord told me that all my other neighbors had already left because of CSW. I felt bad for her, because she probably didn't know she was driving all her neighbors away, but not bad enough to stick around.

I later found a great apartment--at least, I thought it was great until the upstairs neighbor came back from vacation. Apparently, he was a heavy-stepping insomniac that had a compulsion to pace along the creaking floor at all hours of the night . . . .