Acting Neighborly

Today is August 2nd, which just so happens to be mine and Penny's one month anniversary. One month...it feels like it's been much longer than that, but I did the math and it's right. Of course my favorite neighbors occupy apartment 22 (Penny, Keely, Tracy), but when you look at the other 2 households in my building, you'll see that it doesn't take too much to achieve that status. I'm fully aware that the feeling is mutual. The other girls in our building do not care for us boys in Apartment 19. Although Nick and I know our neighbors mainly by what car they drive and that's how we often refer to them (ie. "Red Truck Girl"), each neighbor does have a story... And since most of them are moving out, never to cross our paths again, I think it's time to summarize why we didn't exactly get along.

Apartment 20: The girls directly above us. Nina, Yellow Bug Girl, Nina's Hispanic roommate. Now, we didn't really know anything about these girls for the first 6 months they lived above us. But in the Spring semester last year, Clinton's roommate, Blake began dating Christina, or as she's called, "Nina." Up until this point, we thought the girls upstairs locked themselves indoors all day. However, it turned out that the girls did have strong opinions about Nick and me. "Those boys are loud and always have parties." Why she thought this, I don't know. It could be argued that we were loud from time to time, but her claims that the room under her (Nick) blared loud music until 3AM were completely false. I would kill that kid if he did that. However, these were the opinions that were shared with Clinton. When I got word of this and her name, Christina Gay, I looked her up on facebook and decided to poke her. Later the same day, I saw Blake and Nina coming down the stairs, I was outside because Kevin was in the parking lot running around in my iPod costume I had from Marketing class. Not the prime circumstances for meeting a neighbor, I know. But I took the chance to rebut her ideas of us and told her that "We are Not bad neighbors!" She didn't agree and told us that they have to constantly bang on the floor to keep us quiet. It's not very often that the upstairs neighbor complains that the people below them are too loud. Since then, there have been a couple of warranted claims that we are being loud (hall ball matches, dodgeball during finals, other indoor sports), but for the most part, we are good. They just need to understand that we're boys and we have certain innate needs, like spontaneous hall sports. It's hard being the only boys in the building... From that point on, we began banging on the ceiling and reprimanding Nina from our apartment when they got rowdy. Sometimes it sounds like they're bowling up there... We knew Nina had 2 other roommates, one with a VW Bug, one that's hispanic. I figured out that the Hispanic one lived above me when one day I came home and heard Tejano music blasting from the room above mine. That may be a little stereotypical, but I think my assumption is correct. To conclude, I caught Bug Girl moving out this weekend and decided to have a talk with her. I was in the middle of cleaning out my trunk, so of course I was wearing a newspaper hat that I had made at the OSU basketball game this past semester and a fanny pack that Karen forced me to keep last summer. Bug Girl didn't have much to say to my questions, I could honestly tell she hated us. But she did assure me we weren't the reason she was moving out and as she kindly put it, we "weren't the Worst neighbors Ever, but..." I did acquire the following information from her though: Nina and Hispanic girl will be staying, Bug Girl is getting an apartment with some of her "best friends." So I'm sure we'll have more run-ins with Nina, stay tuned.

Apartment 21: The neighbors directly next to us. Now these are the fan favorites. We have Leslie (Red Truck Girl), their Hispanic roommate and of course, Claire... Last summer they moved in when I was out of town, when I returned I was told about the terrible new neighbor. Nick said he tried meeting her, but she basically ignored him. I said, "I'm sure she's not as terrible as you describe, you just have to be nice!" Later I got my chance to meet the new girl, "Hey you must be our new neighbor, I'm Chris!" I said extending my hand. The girl responded, "..hey...", avoided my hand, walked right past me, all without slowing down or making eye contact. "Yep... you're right, new neighbor is a total jerk," I told Nick as I came in the house and sat on the couch. Since we didn't know her real name, we began referring to her as Claire.
The word that describes Claire the best is, as Penny put it, "Aromatic." The only thing that Claire likes to do is sit on the steps and smoke. She hates all people, including you. I did find out her real name due to some misdelivered mail, so I looked her up on facebook and her entire profile was dedicated to The Force and all things Star Wars and she had a total of 0 friends. I felt bad for her, so I figured it would be nice if her neighbors (Nick, Penny, and I) showed their appreciation by poking her. She didn't respond. I then asked her to be my friend which prompted her to immediately remove her account from facebook. In the past few months, Nick and I have done everything in our power to make her think we're actually insane, but our attempts were met with little response. Leslie was her only roommate that I ever actually got the chance to talk to. She not very personable and I'm pretty sure she thinks she's a thug, but she does talk back when spoken to, which is more than I can say for Claire. I've only seen her third roommate outside of the house on a couple of occasions when the door had been left open. We decided that Claire was holding her prisoner in the apartment and the 2 times we saw her outside were escape attempts. I also spoke with Leslie this weekend, she informed us that all 3 roommates were moving out, going in their seperate ways. She's going to live in a house off of Rock Prairie and Claire is moving into a single bedroom apartment (of course).
"So you're gone for good?" I asked
"Yes, thank God..."
"You didn't like living here?"
"Well, I hated my roommates..."
I should have guessed.

In other neighbor news, I witnessed an Asian man across the parking lot from us, after moving out his living room furniture, walk back upstairs and ride his bike by the open living room window. He seemed like a fun character, I'm sad I didn't meet him before he moved out.

Farewell Claire and friends, thanks for the memories. I only hope our next batch of neighbors provide as much entertainment.