Portrait of An Apartment Complex

It's odd what you notice when you pause for a moment of quiet reflection and different things come together to create a new perception of something. Sometimes your perception is so altered that you realize that you never really saw it in the first place. Many people would say that this kind of renewed vision comes only after you have a lot of time on your hands, and perhaps that's true some of the time. I would add that in those situations, some sort of artificial stimulant is probably involved as well. I remember during the summer I worked at the Utah Shakespearean Festival I was sitting with my room-mate on our small balcony, listening to the conversation of the guys in the apartment below us. The revelation of their conversation consisted mostly of the following:

Guy 1: This is good pizza.
Guy 2: (laughs) Yeah. I like the olives.
Guy 1: And the artichoke hearts.
(Pause)
Guy 1: Hey, have you ever really looked at an artichoke heart?
Guy 2: What do you mean?
Guy 1: Well, 'cause there's like, all these tiny little holes in 'em. See? Right there.
Guy 2: Ohhhhh, yeah! There's tons!

Mind you, this is only an approximation of the dialogue, but the gist is there. My room-mate and I were cracking up.

Back to the matter of new perceptions, however. I have recently begun to look at my apartment complex in a new light. There are a few things that I've noticed about it that seem fairly unique. First of all: my mailbox. We have the standard apartment mailbox which consists of a large metal box containing smaller metal cubes, one for each apartment. This mailbox is situated right next to the large dumpster, which is convenient for the disposal of ads that you never wanted in the first place, but less convenient when your neighbor has just thrown away what smells like a month's worth of burnt popcorn and rotten tomatoes. What makes my mailbox unique is not its proximity to the dumpster, however, but rather its close neighbor: The Hates-Life Lamp. The Hates-Life Lamp is a large street lamp that is supposed to illuminate the mailbox at night, as well as the surrounding parking lot. And most of the time, it fulfills its purpose. The reason that I have come to believe that it hates life is because whenever I come out to check my mail after dark, the lamp flickers out, leaving me to fumble with my mail key in the dark while checking nervously over my shoulder for Spends-A-Lot-Of-Quality-Time-With-His-Car Guy. Perhaps I'm being too hard on Hates-Life Lamp. After all, I have never seen anyone else check their mail at night, so maybe the lamp is not so much Hates-Life Lamp, but more Hates-Bri Lamp.

What was that? You're curious about Spends-A-Lot-Of-Quality-Time-With-His-Car Guy? Well, by all means, let me enlighten you. As you may have guessed from his name, this guy spends (in my opinion) an inordinate amount of time with his car. What's so strange about that? I know that some of you may be asking yourselves that. After all, lots of guys spend time on their cars. What makes Spends-A-Lot-Of-Quality-Time-With-His-Car Guy unique is not so much the amount of time he spends with his car, but what he actually does. You see, this guy is an older man who spends a lot of time parking his car (a new-ish Buick) and sitting in it. Almost every time I see this guy park, he backs into his parking space. Not so strange. But he does it about three times. Not because his first attempt wasn't good enough. For some inexplicable reason, he feels compelled to park and re-park until his Buick is exactly parallel with the guide lines, with the same amount of space on either side. He'll park once, open the door and evaluate, then park again, open the door again, etc. And when he's finally satisfied with the spacial relationship between his car and his parking space, he sits in his Buick for about ten minutes. God knows what he's doing in there.

I could go on about my neighbor next door who likes to play bass, most often when I'm more tired than usual and really need to get to sleep. Or perhaps I could mention my neighbor downstairs on the opposite side who's kind of cute but is also gay, unfortunately for me. His partner is also kind of cute, which is equally unfortunate for me. I could also talk about the lady I work with who lives on the other side of the apartment complex. She's a very nice lady and we get on well at work, but when she invited me over to watch a movie, I politely declined. Not because it would have been awkward, but because I know that she keeps tarantulas as pets.

So that's a portrait of my apartment complex. All right, maybe it's not a portrait. A nice school photo, then. Okay, okay. A candid.