Saturday, September 6, 2014

Things No One Tells You About Living in an Apartment (When You're an Adult and You Start Giving a Shit)

Living in an apartment when you're an adult is not so bad.

Except when you have a job you must get up for, kids who must go to school in the morning, or when you wish for a modicum of privacy.

No one tells you that your neighbors will cook foods with smells that defy the laws of physics and displace the oxygen in your stairwell with the scent of burnt curry.

No one tells you that while you thought you had heard a lot of bad pop music, you haven't really experienced it until you've heard it blared from a teenage girls slumber party, replete with the background squeals of... teenage girls.
At one in the morning.

No one tells you that it will become your habit to lock everything, all the time, because the little bastard who lives in the next row will steal... anything-your daughter's gardening tools-for sheer spite.

No one tells you that your neighbors will have finely tuned the art of waiting for you to move your car so that thirty of their very closest friends and family members can park right in front of your apartment.
Seriously, you were only gone for 15 minutes to get a damned gallon of milk.

No one tells you, but everyone knows, that your postal worker is literally certifiably insane, but they still aren't going to give you your mail when it comes to their house by mistake. It's every man for himself out here in the 'hood.

No one tells you about the weird pinwheel flower memorial in the flowerbed for the one woman that everyone liked. (Surely there isn't a new tenant already? They NEVER move anyone in that fast.)

No one tells you that you will start to hope that you are the "loud sex neighbor" because you don't want any of the other available labels.

No one tells you that you will have a flower pot burial for your pet rat because there's nowhere else to put him and tossing him in the dumpster will upset your kids,
and just feels wrong anyway.

No one tells you this shit, because no one in their right mind would believe it.

RIP Sandy, you were one of the good ones.