Howdy, Neighbor!

I got new neighbors today.

Now, this isn't big news. People move in, people move out. It's the way of an ever-changing world. But in my building, it's an occasion.

I live in a four-family apartment building. When I moved in, I was the only non-related person in the building. My mother had heard about the apartment from a co-worker in her office when she still worked at the Zoo. Co-worker's mother was the landlady of the building, and had an immediate vacancy on a one-bedroom in Norwood. Landlady also has a son working at the Zoo (in Wings of Wonder, our bird exhibit), and actually had worked my desk years before. (She works in the office of a parochial school now.)

Despite my reluctance to move back into Norwood (In my head, it seemed like I was taking a step backward and admitting defeat... no, it doesn't make sense, but it did at that point in my life, and sometimes still does. I'm still making peace with much of my past.), I was about through with the bohemian Clifton life. Everyone I knew had moved out - Paisley1974 and Mark had moved to New Orleans (sending good thoughts in your direction, BTW... take care!), Roger Mexico had moved on to Small Eastern PA College Town, Mike Dangers was considering getting out, and my strangely eclectic neighbors were starting to become less eclectic and more... I hesitate to use the word "redneck" as I never really knew them, but it certainly wasn't the same mix of foreign grad students, gay (and gay-friendly) liberals, and nonjudgmental folks with liberal views and crappy credit. Break-ins were becoming more frequent. Memos from the resident managers about hate speech showed up on tenants' doors. After the eight billionth time I'd walked out to my car to find the window broken and my car stereo missing, I'd had enough. Enough to put aside my prejudice against myself and agree to look at an apartment in Norwood.

The apartment was old, a shotgun setup, with a non-functioning fireplace in the living room. (Complete creepy aside here: I Googled "shotgun apartment" to make sure I was using the term correctly, and the first result was a website for finding apartments in NOLA. Ugh. Sorry. Trying to avoid a depressing rant on the last week. Forget I mentioned it.) It was cheaper than the Clifton apartment. (Well, until the heating costs for an apartment with big windows and no insulation were factored in. Doesn't matter. Despite the horrible draft on my couch in the winter, I still love my giant windows.) The landlady was easygoing and likable. I signed the lease that evening, and moved in right after Thanksgiving. (I was invited to the house dinner in case I didn't have anywhere else to go.)

My landlady's sisters lived downstairs from me, across the hall from Landlady. Across the hall from me was Landlady's other daughter and her two children, Quiet Young Teen Daughter and Belligerent Older Teen Boy. Everyone in the building had dogs, which confused my kitties to no end. (The Clifton apartment, to my knowledge, only had one dog, owned by the resident managers. Most of us had cats, except for the guy next door who shall always be known as Ferret Boy.)

There was another resident in the Family apartments: the estranged (I think? I really don't want to know the details) ex-husband of Landlady's Daughter and father of the Teens. He lived in the basement for some reason, in a corner sectioned off with sheets on clotheslines à la It Happened One Night. I realized his presence one Thursday night when I was doing laundry and noticed that I could hear ER much clearer than I should have been able to through the floor. From that point he became The Man in the Basement. He seems to be an OK guy, and I try to do my laundry at a decent hour. Weird, but I'm no example of normality myself. Who am I to question things?

Belligerent Older Teen Boy was the only problem I really had. Most of the time, he was just surly and simmering. Sometimes the simmering boiled over into loud cursing at whoever in his apartment was pissing him off. I would be enjoying a quiet night in with a movie from Netflix and my quirky art house movie or foreign film would suddenly be interrupted by "FUCK! GODDAMMIT! I HATE LIVING HERE! I JUST WANNA FUCKIN' LEAVE!" I would roll my eyes and turn the sound up louder or focus harder on the subtitles. Ah, the joys of apartment living. Not as weird as hearing Ferret Boy singing country music in the shower while I was in the bath. It was annoying but sporadic. He mowed the lawn and took out the trash cans. I figured he'd either move out eventually or get some anger management or a Xanax prescription. I'm sure I was pretty intolerable in my rebellious years, but my immediate family was the only one who had to suffer through it.

Beside BOTB, my neighbors have been wonderful folks. When I broke my ankle, they all left their phone numbers with me, just in case I needed something from the grocery or a pack of smokes. (Everyone in my building smokes with the exception of Teen Girl and Man in the Basement, but I don't think any of them would've had the first clue where to buy cloves.) On Halloween, we all gather on the steps downstairs with candy for the kids and cigarettes for ourselves and spend half the night visiting with our neighbors. We stop by the funeral home across the street to get the good candy (they buy an array of full-sized candy bars, but make the kids actually go into the lobby and take their candy from the open coffin with a dummy inside) and chit-chat with the guys while their dogs play in the front yard. We gossip with the housewives down the street. We ooh and aah over every single kid's costume and hand out entirely too much candy. (Trick-or-Treaters are still a novelty to me. Before I moved here, I never got them, so I'm making up for over a decade of cavities and sugar buzzes.)

For the most part, I guess I'm not a good neighbor. I'm one of those "she was quiet; she kept to herself" tenants. I try to keep it down when I'm up at odd hours. I occasionally have friends over (not enough), and I'm sure my neighbors are confused by the wide range of people that stop by. (I'm sure the Oscar party caused no end of gossip: women in formal attire, men with long hair, small children, and a late-arriving guy dressed in all black, and eyebrow piercing and possibly eyeliner. Quite a change from my very clean cut suburban family members that stop by from time to time, and probably not what my good straight-laced Catholic neighbors were expecting on a Sunday night.)

A few months ago, the sisters moved out. I'm not sure what the circumstances were, but I gathered that they were tired of the 24/7 family thing. Landlady's Daughter and the Teens moved downstairs, and the apartment across the hall from me was renovated. Aside from occasional blockage of the back landing by carpet scraps, ladders, and cleaning supplies, it didn't really affect me all that much. I just shrugged, moved the ladder blocking my door, and hoped that the new neighbors wouldn't be friends of BOTB.

So anyway (after this incredibly long and tedious exposition), my new neighbors moved in earlier today, with the help of a small army of friends. As far as I can tell, it's a couple (married? unmarried?) in their twenties. The guy is skinny with glasses, the girl appears older. Apparently their lease didn't include garage space (as five out of six bays are in use, and the last one is still full of junk), and their four-door sedan is parked out front. The car, incidentally, has a large spoiler on the back. Not a factory spoiler - it's one of those garage jobs that looks like it was assembled in a high school metal shop. It's too early to make a judgment on these folks. They've only been here for twelve hours, but so far the only noise I've heard is the crack of a beer when I was picking up my mail. (I'm assuming it was a beer, since they were probably rewarding their friends with moving-party-payoffs of pizza and beer. Hell, that's all I ever asked when I helped friends move. I'm cheap like that.)

I'm sure I'll eventually run into these folks in the hall. I'm wondering how I'll introduce myself. "Hi! I'm Myo! I live across the hall from you. I'm overcaffeinated and I smoke funny cigarettes. I listen to weird music - anything from Broadway show tunes to punk rock - but I'll try to keep it down. I talk to my cats. I talk back to the TV. I sometimes keep weird hours due to insomnia, but again, I'll try to be quiet. You might hear a click-clacking from my apartment; that's me on my computer. I may laugh out loud when I'm doing this. You may hear any variation of languages coming from my apartment as well; I like foreign films. (I also like culty movies, and you might hear me reciting dialogue. That happens with Kevin Smith films a lot.) Some of my friends that stop by might look a little funny to you. Deal with it; they're nice people. And if I grunt unintelligibly at you in the mornings, don't take it personally. I'm pre-verbal until 9:00. Later if I've got a day off.

"Oh, and please excuse anything I do in November. Things get a little weird around here in November. Welcome to the neighborhood!"

I don't know if that would be a comforting greeting or if it would scare the shit out of them. Mr. Rogers I am not.