crazy customer series<\/a>), then this neighbor is it. From Friday at 7pm through Sunday night, she sits in our laundry room reading magazines and academic journals and strong arms everyone she encounters into awkward conversation. There\u2019s no avoiding her. She\u2019s there all day and all night, and she\u2019s a light sleeper.<\/p>\nShe does attempt to explain herself if you encounter her at odd hours. She claims that, in the summer, her top floor apartment is too hot. In the winter, she has the same complaint. Our apartments have a communist heating system that we can\u2019t control. It clicks on in mid-October and doesn\u2019t turn off till mid-March, ensuring that the building is always a steady 100 degrees. All through winter, the residents run air conditioners and keep their windows open.<\/p>\n
If you encounter her in the middle of the night, she explains that she \u201ccouldn\u2019t sleep\u201d and that the laundry room \u201crelaxes her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chiefly because of her (and not the mildew, which I braved because I was lazy), I\u2019ve stopped doing my laundry in our building. Instead, I visit friends and family twice a month and cart my laundry around. Then I force them to sit and have awkward conversations with me.<\/p>\n
With the laundry room cut out of my life, things have started to feel a bit more normal at home. If there\u2019s one thing I hate, it\u2019s running into anyone I deal with \u2013 in any capacity \u2013 during the day. There\u2019s a kid who lives in the apartments across the street who used to work for me at my weekend job and we share the same commute. I\u2019ve been forced to commute erratically, cutting through the woods, leaving early in the morning, and racing through backyards just to avoid him. I hate the obligation of being socially connected to these people. Like we have something in common because you bedevil me during the day, or we once shared a few shifts.<\/p>\n
Having been born and raised in DC, there\u2019s a certain unwritten agreement that I expect from all my neighbors: We will never really know each other or exchange anything beyond the minimum social pleasantries. This makes it easier when we choose not to assist our neighbors when they\u2019re in distress or, top of my list of concerns, when we have to murder them after the apocalypse.<\/p>\n
Is that just me? I worry sometimes that I\u2019m all alone when I walk down the street and judge who I\u2019d kill and eat and who I would attempt to ally with when the next mega-snowstorm moves in and shuts us down for a week.<\/p>\n
Going through life with this attitude can be troublesome when you live right on top of people, even if it\u2019s just a tiny little warren of nine apartments. At my old building, everyone worked as much as I did, so the place might as well have been deserted. You\u2019d take a day off and start to wonder if everyone else had died. From the balcony, surrounded by utter silence, my car would be the lonely sentinel in an empty parking lot. Then the hordes would start coming home in the late evening and all, apparently, go to their apartments and collapse face first in the living room.<\/p>\n
Here at my current building, it\u2019s exactly the opposite. Nobody works. Ever. All of my neighbors \u2013 young or old, married or single \u2013 wander aimlessly around the halls, compulsively check the mail all day, and sit out in the courtyard with cases of beer, books, laptops, and lawn games. I\u2019ve come to the point where I take days off just so I can peer out the window and live vicariously through them. The cars never leave the parking lot except for a weekly shopping trip or something like that. I\u2019m always surprised when the cars next to mine have changed. It\u2019s only happened a few times.<\/p>\n
In my sub-section, on the ground floor, in 101, there\u2019s the twitchy guy with the buzz cut. He looks to be about 30 and entertains two women. He\u2019s got his daytime girl, who leaves around 3pm, then his evening girl comes home from work at five. He\u2019s quiet and seems incapable of speaking to me, even when the situation demands it. I\u2019ve never seen him go any farther than the courtyard, and all of his groceries are delivered. When the weather\u2019s nice, his daytime girl must be a bit tiresome. His usual habit is to sit in the courtyard from about 9am to 2pm with a large bottle of vodka that he\u2019ll quietly polish off. On summer weekends, he tends to start around 8am.<\/p>\n
In 102, one of the area\u2019s premier poets has fallen into a Salinger-esque lifestyle. He\u2019s 50\u2019s, single, and shy to the point of it being a phobia. He spends his day wandering the courtyard or mailing out submissions to poetry contests. He does all of his shopping at the little Co-Op around the corner, and is another one who rarely leaves the property. Like his neighbor in 101, he\u2019s never spoken a word to me. I envy him a bit, though. From what I\u2019ve researched online, it looks like he\u2019s living off of poetry contest winnings.<\/p>\n
In 103 is the animal lady. She has dogs, birds, and god knows what else. Passing her door sounds like you\u2019re passing a portal to some primeval jungle. She does have a job. One of the few. She works regular hours three days a week, and spends the rest of her time with her menagerie. I can hear her at night\u2026 She moans constantly and, at 4am every morning, gets in a very animated argument with her dogs about how they can hold off having to go outside till a more decent hour. This has become my de facto alarm, which is actually quite handy. If I\u2019m ever late for work, though, I\u2019m not sure how to frame the excuse: \u201cMy neighbor\u2019s dogs didn\u2019t have to pee.\u201d<\/p>\n
On my floor, 201 is home to the feisty Irish lady. She\u2019s frequently complained to anyone who\u2019ll listen that I\u2019m offending her by flying the Union Jack in my second bedroom. I have a UK flag hanging from the wall, which she can see from her living room window. Repeated attempts to have it taken down as a \u201cracist icon on par with flying a Swastika\u201d have failed, but they\u2019ve gone as high as the management company and the tenant-based board of directors.<\/p>\n
Her roommate is addicted to working out and prone to being attacked by men and overdosing on drugs. She\u2019s always good for some sort of very public drama in the courtyard once a month or so that, usually, ends up with a horde of police and knock-down arguments.<\/p>\n
Both of them appear to work normal hours, though the troubled roommate seems to put in half a day most days. She\u2019ll spend the other half of the day wildly sprinting up and down the nearby church parking lot, hooting and yelling to herself when she finishes a lap. Then she\u2019ll march off to yoga. Then she\u2019ll come home and shoot up and the paramedics will come. Then she\u2019ll get into a fistfight with them when she wakes up on the stretcher as they\u2019re taking her out.<\/p>\n
A spinster lives in 202, and she creeps around and is generally avoided by everyone. She goes out for long walks, so she\u2019s better off than the pseudo-shut-ins on the first floor. She\u2019s the habitual vacuumer that plagues every apartment building. The neighbor who vacuums frequently for a duration that simply can\u2019t be explained. I know how long it takes to vacuum my apartment \u2013 10 minutes. So what is she doing? She\u2019ll vacuum twice a week for an hour nonstop\u2026sometimes longer. Which can only mean that her apartment is the TARDIS.<\/p>\n
In every apartment I\u2019ve lived in since the mid 90\u2019s, the chronic vacuuming neighbor has haunted me. Once, in Bethesda, they lived above me. Since then, they\u2019ve lived next to or below me. I\u2019ve found that to be more bearable\u2026 But the bitch who lived above me in 1995 tops my list of people I plan to murder some day when the world ends or I\u2019m diagnosed with an incurable disease.<\/p>\n
I sort of pity the spinster, but I do go through great pains to avoid her, as does the rest of my little commune of soulless suburbanites.<\/p>\n
On the third floor, we move into true darkness. 301 sees my most stable neighbors \u2013 a young couple and their baby. They\u2019re polite, aloof, and the husband works. They stick to themselves in their little corner and, being on the top floor, I\u2019m sure their apartment is a steady 120 degrees year round. Yet they never stand in the hallway like my other neighbors and complain loudly about it to their imaginary friends.<\/p>\n
Nobody has seen the residents of 302. We think there are two people in that apartment. They collect their overflowing mail once a week (though have never been seen doing so), they don\u2019t make a sound, and they get everything delivered and dropped off at their door. From outside, their apartment is always dark, except for the lonely glow of a TV.<\/p>\n
In 303, my upstairs neighbor, we have the belle of the misfit ball. A woman who never leaves her apartment, and hasn\u2019t done so in 18 years according to my landlord. She makes the guy who delivers her groceries collect her mail.<\/p>\n
Day and night, she paces the creaking floors of her apartment. She never sleeps, and her pacing wakes me most nights. She\u2019s never still. Especially when she gets mad. Then she knocks over furniture and pounds the walls and floor. She\u2019ll scream and rage until the police come, and then she\u2019ll carry on a heated, lunatic conversation with them through her door. It\u2019s the sort of situation where the police know her well so, everytime they come and we\u2019re all standing out in the hallway watching them with wide eyes, they huff and sigh and laugh and whisper, \u201cYour neighbor\u2019s having an episode,\u201d in a way reminiscent of how my grandmother used to describe bouts of insanity. Except she would pronounce \u201cepisode\u201d as \u201cepi-zoody.\u201d<\/p>\n
At night, my upstairs neighbor also moans. I can hear the strange, animal keening from the top floor quite clearly. Luckily, she seems to spend most of her time in the living room or dining room, well away from the bedrooms. But it can be haunting if you get up in the early AM for a glass of water or something.<\/p>\n
Because 303 is at the end of the hall, she\u2019s set up baffling with those screens you use to divide rooms. Something I see caterers do at my weekend job to keep the guests out of the prep area. Four six-foot screens, draped in black, set up in a way intended to confuse drunks, and maybe squirrels.<\/p>\n
We all consider the third floor to be some sort of closed-off, haunted area. We\u2019re polite to the couple with the baby, but we assume they\u2019re tainted in some way by their neighbors. Apparently, my neighbor in 303 is very active in the world for a shut-in. Even strangers who live blocks away in single family homes hiss and curse about her, though they never explain why. I ask and they get a look on their faces like I\u2019m a spy and edge slowly away. Are you working for her<\/em>? Are you one of them<\/em>?<\/p>\nFrom what I can gather, she sits at her window with a telescope and looks for people breaking the rules of either our apartment complex or the surrounding neighborhood. Lawns that go untended, noise violations, failing to clean up after your dog, and so on. Strongly worded complaints to the police go out as soon as she sees something.<\/p>\n
So here I sit at my weekend job. My laundry is in a friend\u2019s machine nearby, the wine is flowing, and I dread going to my day job on Monday and getting a call from my neighbor. Ooooh, Nacho! I\u2019ve missed you in the laundry room! She started doing that about eight months ago, and calls at least once a week. Yay for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the week, I work for a membership-based organization catering to healthcare professionals. (Words we use loosely.) It\u2019s what I refer to as my \u201cday job\u201d whenever I\u2019m asked the difficult question \u201cwhat do you do?\u201d and find myself describing …<\/p>\n
Neighbors<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[332,73],"class_list":["post-2154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meanwhile-in-silver-spring","tag-neighbors","tag-silver-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2154"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2167,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions\/2167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}