Smokes-A-Lot

There are two types of senior citizens in this world. The first kind make you believe that life truly is a beautiful journey with trials and tribulations that only add grace and understanding to one’s soul. The other kind, however, make you want to revoke driving privileges from everybody over 55 and go Brave New World style creating old folks homes like mad to throw them all in there with nothing to do but watch reruns of Matlock and Murder She Wrote and eat checkers. I distinguish this difference easily: the elderly vs. old people.

The latter lives beneath me in my apartment complex. I call her Smokes-A-Lot, and she’s a nasty, bitter, hateful old woman. Sometimes I feel sorry for her that she just sits in her apartment all day watching TV and getting an occasional visitor (I’m assuming family member), but most of the time I loathe her for the fact that the four packs of hard smokes she wheezes through each day ends up creeping its way up through my floors and vents and fills my entire apartment with her second hand smoke – and she seems incapable of purchasing an Ionic Breeze despite the multiple Sharper Image catalogs I’ve left on her doorstep with the page earmark and item circled in thick, red sharpie. Checkers for her, I tell you. Anyway, she hates me. And I don’t think it’s because of the Sharper Image catalogs – she couldn’t possibly know those are from me.

I decided that she’s an ‘old person’ almost immediately after I moved into my complex. So here’s the back-story: Where I live looks like a row of super big houses, but each building is actually four apartments: two upstairs, two downstairs. I got a great deal on my place because at the time the owners were renovating each apartment and making them SUPER nice, but our building they couldn’t do yet because Smokes-A-Lot and the old dude next to her have lived there for like 10+ years and aren’t going anywhere any time soon. So I asked the landlords if I could move in upstairs at the pre-fixed-up rate, and they and gave me leave to do whatever I wanted to the place since they were just going to gut it after I moved out anyway. One day pretty soon after I had moved in I was hanging pictures at like 3 or 4 in the afternoon. I was on my 4th picture and as I was hammering the nail into the wall I hear banging coming from below. She actually started banging on my ceiling because I was hanging pictures! It’s not like each nail took me 19 tries to get in the wall far enough either, I’m talking two, maybe three taps from the hammer and I was good. This warrants angry banging on the damn ceiling?! Freaking old people.

Anyway, she does little nasty things all the time just to remind me that she sucks. She doesn’t own a car, and yet if I ever happen to park in the space labeled A (which is one space away from my D, mind you) she’ll leave a note on my car telling me that’s her parking space and move my car. If I leave a trash bag on my balcony to take out to the dumpster later she’ll move it right in front of my back door so that I trip on it leaving for work in the morning – sometimes she’ll even leave her trash on the steps up to my apartment in hopes I don’t notice that it’s not mine and take it for her. Sometimes I’m nice and I do, but most of the time I give her a taste of her own medicine and put it right back in front of her door. Now, readers, don’t get all bent out of shape and think that I’m being mean to Smokes-A-Lot. I’ve seen that bitch run after her little yappy ankle-biter of a dog when it gets out, and other than chronic emphysema she’s got nothing wrong with her under that ratty-ass old housecoat.

My friend Blake used to have a Smoke-A-Lot living under him, too, but she wasn’t bitchy. She was just kind of stalker-ish and would somehow know exactly when he got home every day and be waiting for him to walk up the steps so she could talk to him. That’s a way better Smokes-A-Lot than mine. Anyway, the point is that there’s a Smokes-A-Lot in every apartment complex, and I promise, nay, guarantee a good stories if you can find yours. I’ll keep you posted.

I have good news and bad news...

Well, really there is no good news for you, readers, unless of course you are able to join me in a collective sigh of relief upon hearing my news.

I'll start with the bad news for you: all the stories about my creepy neighbor (aka mannequin boy, aka Operation 303, etc.) that you all love so dearly are going to stop. Why? Well, he got himself fired for being a douche-bag.

Which leads me into the good news for me...

In all seriousness, there is a part of me that, strangely enough, actually feels bad for the guy (I think there's a complex for that... its a Syndrome... a city... Stockholm Syndrome? Something like that. Google it). Yeah, okay so not as bad as the syndrome, but I mean the guy has no friends other than online World of Warcraft guild buddies and two dogs, is from the east coast so has no family in the area, is a social deaf/mute with no people skills, and now has lost his job. It’s sad, and the part of my soul that God is trying really hard to save from eternal damnation is working overtime to conjure up these feelings of pity and well-wishes on Creep-O’s behalf. I won’t get into details on why he’s “no longer with the company” (I love bullshit corporate America terms, don’t you?) but he’s out. Cube has been cleared out, and a peaceful quiet has descended upon my row. Its glorious.

The funny and ironic part is that he’s still my neighbor, which has made my arrival home each evening like a scene from a fucking Mission Impossible movie. I’ve had to resort to rolling by my complex parking area like I’m trying out for a damn rap video, and then depending on where Creep-O’s car happens to be I have two options: 1) drive all the way around my building to park on the other side and walk up the front stairs, only to brave Smokes-A-Lot complaining about the fact that I walk in my apartment, ** or 2) park in my space in the back, in full view of Creep-O’s back door, and work with the evening shadows to shimmy up my back stairs before he sees me.

** Smokes-A-Lot is a nasty, bitter old woman who lives in the apartment below me. She chain smokes what must be 9 packs a day in her apartment, leaking fumes up through the vents causing my whole place to smell like smoke unless I leave every window open and fan on and Febreeze every day, and the old goat has the nerve complain about every last movement or noise I make in my apartment. If I talk with my upstairs neighbor (the cool one) on my balcony for 10 minutes I’ll get a note pinned to my door later on telling me to keep it down because her yappy little ankle-biter of a “dog” gets too excited to rest when there is “so much commotion outside.”

So I guess the bad news is that I’ve lost a “shoo-in” source for good stories, but the good news is that with my newly restored sanity I’ll be able to come up with other outlets from which to find inspiration to write. And to Creep-O, here are a few things I’d like to personally thank you for:

- for teaching me the importance of double bolting my locks
- for being the “Karen” of the group (if you don’t know what this means you need to listen to Dane Cook)
- all the laughs (even though most were at your expense)
- for providing me with constant opportunities to think before I speak and not say everything that pops into my head

It has been interesting, Mannequin Boy. Cheers.