Life in the Dorm

One would think I'd have left the dorms a long time ago (seeing as I've seen age thirty come and go)... when I was in college lying perfectly still on my extra long twin bed (extra-long because I'm 5'0" tall. Oh, wait, extra-long because they are the same government-issue beds they use in prisons!) to fantasize about when I'd get out of college, get a nice job, no longer a minimum wage job at JC Penney or at SuperCrown books, and have my own apartment) but it turns out that apartments, at least ones with adjoining walls, and ones that I can afford, are always just an extension of dorm life with the usual LOVELY neighbors... screaming and yelling... drunken crying... cops are called... cops lead sobbing angry girl away... just a typical Friday early morning at, say, 3:00 am.

DD and I have lived in this apartment for three and a half years. In that time, the apartment downstairs has emptied and filled four times, if you count the person who just moved in today. Tonight. Or at least, she started at 11:00 pm and, well, since the people helping her move appear to be her parents, who are rather portly and slow-moving in their middle aged-ness, it's still going on.

The first couple was pretty noisy. They enjoyed chasing each other through the apartment and giggling, which is cute, I suppose, except that they were each over 250 lbs and their footfalls on the cheap hardwood floors and their bodies bumping against the walls had me in a perpetual state of fear that an earthquake was starting. (I lived in Northridge, California during the huge Northridge Earthquake. In fact, I lived in the dorms, most of which were damaged so badly that we had to double and triple up the next semester.) I had to draw the line when they got out of their huge SUV and hit my car door, denting it, then had the nerve to try to rub the mark away, leaving an oily circle AND a dent. We had a talk which resulted in CarolAnn making her passenger and the culprit apologize to me and then they gave me a bottle of wine.

The second girl was better because at least she lived alone. Very alone, with a very big TV with amazing sound, amazing bass. It would rattle my floor and windows. She favored loud movies. Always with the gun sounds. It couldn't be Memento, the movie about Chopin, for example, or, like, Rivers and Tides, that documentary about Andy Goldsworty. She rarely went out, and when she did she returned with huge cases of food from Costco. She liked Marie Callender's potpies.

When she moved out, another girl moved in. She moved in with a roommate. The roommate had a giant teddy bear that lived in the living room. It was always kind of funny to come home and see the giant teddy bear just kicking it on the couch. I didn't care much about the roommate, because her bedroom was under the small bedroom I use as my walk in closet. The main girl drove me crazy with her cough. She apparently had some kind of respiratory ailment that required her to use a drug called DuoNeb. I know this because she had a DuoNeb box in the window of her car. Maybe it was like a Medical Alert bracelet. Like if she got in a car accident, the first responders would see that box and know she was on DuoNeb. She coughed like crazy. It sounded like gunshots. It made me so nervous and self conscious, realizing I could hear her coughing so clearly, that when I had a cold and got a cough, I slept on my couch in the living room.
Anyway, she was weird...we rode the bus together sometimes... sometimes I would force conversation, but most of the time she just ingored me, as if we weren't living in this very close situation where I could hear her coughing like gunshots.

So, she's now moved out (her parents helped) and the new girl, who is basically a clone of her, is moving in. What's with women in their 20's having out of shape daddy and uncles in their late 50's moving at the speed of molasses as their movers? My dad has never had to lift a piece of my furniture or drive a U Haul for me... why should he? I'm an adult. And Lord knows I've never moved into an apartment in the dead of night. Hell, I'm an ADMINISTRATIVE PROFESSIONAL. I'm more prepared than that.

A lukerwarm welcome to Downstairs Neighbor #4. Can't wait to hear your sound system coming through the walls.