Won't you be my neighbor?

I haven't had a good feud with the neighbors lately. Cat Guy has kept his minion army mostly at home base, Kidney Boy stopped parking in front of our house, and I've actually befriended a couple of our neighbors, namely Lonely Lady (a 50-something woman who lives by herself), Formerly Fat Guy (aka FFG, who plowed our driveway and sidewalk all summer for brownie compensation), and Ram Guy (whose name I do actually know, is Fred, and always randomly appears when I'm in distress). So I've been rather bored since I haven't had anyone locally to take out my passive-aggressive rage on.

It's not that I actively seek out conflicts with my neighbors. I just have a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit, and it's especially so when it infringes on my living space. I learned the hard way, from my early days as an innocent and naive college student living alone in her first "big girl" apartment, to the long, embittered journey that brought me to this house.

My first apartment was actually really nice for a first go at independence. It had a beautiful view of a "lake" (it was a big pond, but it was beautiful nonetheless) on a nice side of town. Unfortunately I got herded into the same building as some real nutjobs that quickly transformed me from the sweet little college girl into a shiv-wielding, trust-no-one hermit.

On the day I moved in, I met Kevin. On my first encounter of Kevin, he seemed nice enough besides an inherent creepy vibe. He wore a light gray t-shirt and light gray sweatpants and black socks with Birkenstocks, and this apparently was his uniform, as he wore this every single time I ever saw him, like some sort of cartoon character. He was quiet. He avoided eye contact. And whenever I walked past his apartment door, on the rare occasion that it was open, it was obvious this man was a packrat. Newspapers, boxes, computer parts, plants, weird things that I don't even know, piled from floor to ceiling in his dimly lit apartment. On the rare chance that I walked by and he was coming or going and I peeked into his apartment, he'd quickly the shut the door and stare at me like I'd mortally offended his mother.

Kevin was creepy and I soon decided that he was a serial killer. He would talk on his cell phone outside -- maybe better reception, I don't know -- but he'd walk around the apartment building on his cell phone, smoking cigarettes, and giving you dirty looks if you glanced his way while he was talking. I stopped looking at him after awhile because I was pretty sure that if I continued to give my obligatory half smile, he was going to kill me and make a suit out of my skin.

Directly above my apartment was the Somalians. I was never sure how many people lived there. It seemed like they switched people out like Swatch watch covers. But they were always African (like "click click" African), and always had a shitload of children. And they were loud. God, they were loud. And perhaps they wanted to take their dysfunction outside away from the children, or maybe they just wanted to share with the rest of us in the building, but they always went out on the balcony to scream at each other in whatever their native tongue was. I think it was angry yelling. I was never really sure. But they'd scream and fight and throw ceramics off the balcony (which hey, I got a really cool free pot with only a few minor chips that way). Then they'd have sex later.

And because I lived in the apartment directly beneath them, I was the lucky winner of several used condoms on my balcony. Which is a little surprising, considering how many children they had running around. Maybe they learned from past mistakes. I don't really know.

Also above my apartment, and one over, was a young college couple, Matt and Ashley, who were my age. Initially I thought they were pretty cool -- Ashley had family in my hometown, Matt and I had a lot of really similar music tastes. After a while, I found myself up in their apartment, or them in mine, about every night, having a beer and watching TV or movies or playing games. Pretty normal stuff. Then I began to realize Ashley was bipolar. Really bipolar. Like we went out to IHOP one night and when she didn't get her hash browns with her meal, she had a complete meltdown. And was completely inconsolable.

After I realized Ashley wasn't exactly stable (but I mean hey, who of us really is?), I started to realize that Matt and Ashley fought a lot. I could hear them screaming at each other frequently. Then one day I caught an argument where she believed he was cheating on her with me (no). This insecurity turned into resentment and pretty soon it became really obvious that she didn't want me hanging out with them anymore. Combine that with the fact that on a crazy day, Ashley asked if I'd have a threesome with them... our friendship kind of dissolved after I discovered I don't have a high tolerance for Crazy.

Some of the craziness wasn't even from residents, necessarily. I quickly encountered a nemesis in the form of a very obese woman on a motorized scooter who would come and pick through our trash. She was accompanied by what I was never quite sure was either a child or a midget, and they'd rifle through the dumpster beside the apartment building, collect their treasures, and then escape down the road on the motorized scooter. Where they came from and where they went, I don't really know, but I saw them booking down the street on more than one occasion. The woman wasn't exactly pleasant; she screamed at me that I was a slut on more than one occasion, but I never responded, namely because she saw me getting out of my car once and I really didn't want her to do anything to my car. I started leaving expired groceries and canned goods beside the dumpster, after I figured out her patterns, and hoped that maybe she'd appreciate my good deeds, and not scratch my car, or maybe even stop calling me a whore. She never did stop calling me a whore and a slut, but I'm fairly certain my car made it out of that lease unscathed.

Eventually, my lease expired, I moved to another apartment, and then into A.'s house, and neighbors have come and gone and battles and feuds have been fought, some won, some lost, all passive-aggressive in their own right. But I'll never forget that first apartment and the creepy serial killer, the horny, angry multiplying Somalians, the Schadenfreunde, and the insult-screaming obese woman on the Rascal and her pet midget. These are the people that fate brings into our lives to make them interesting, and to make us appreciate deadbolt locks.