New Neighbor, Same Old Crazy

So much to share, so much has happened. First, however, the most recent gem...

Several months ago, my crazy upstairs neighbor moved away.  Since then, things have been, frankly, far less crazy.  Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing.  In fact, it's a great thing.  The new tenant is a pretty nice guy.  He's an older gent who's renting the apartment while he's in town for some continuing education courses related to his job.  In start contrast to the previous tenant, Batshit McCrazy, he's a friendly, "with-it" kind of guy.  On numerous occasions, we had conversations outside.  He's got a knack for remembering who the hell I am and what it is that I do.  To top it off, he remembers Winning Run and a bit about her as well.  I suppose that he's just a nice guy who enjoys conversation.  Anyway, it's a nice change from the previous who, each time she met you, seemed happy to be meeting you for the first time.

Last week, on the eve of the President's Day weekend, I was packing my car to head to Seattle to see Winning Run.  As I'm putting the last bag inside, I see him walking across the parking lot toward his apartment and say "hello."  We begin to talk.  After a short while, the conversation drifts toward current events and to the upheaval in Egypt and other countries in the vicinity.

"It's pretty crazy what's going on over there, right?," I asked.

"Yeah," he said.  "It's a mess.  We need to watch out."

"Tell me about it.  Oil prices are going to go through the roof," I offered.

"Uh huh.  We need to be aware of what we're doing; they're watching," he explained.

"Yeah, we use too much oil.  I guess the government does need to watch out.  We need to wean ourselves off of it, don't we?," I offered.

He looked a little puzzled. "Government?  No, man, the UFOs are watching us."

[Silence.]

"Huh?," I asked, unsure of how we moved so quickly from unrest in the Middle East to extraterrestrial monitoring of our affairs.

"Yeah, they're out there," he exclaimed while pointed toward the horizon.  "I seen 'em flying.  I know planes and what I've seen are not planes."

"Okaaayyyy," I said while trying to put on my best poker face.

"It's started back in World War II when we built the bomb and brought all the Nazis over to work on the space program.  We had the power of death, the bomb.  They started watching."

"Really," I said, moving toward my door.

"I've got friends who work for nuclear power plants.  Sometimes the guards will go outside and see their ships hovering outside.  Sometimes they shut the plants down, just turn 'em off, to let us know they're watching us."

"Guess we'd better behave, then," I told him.  I wished him and good evening and ducked into my living room.  "Well, that got effing crazy really, really fast," I said to the emptiness.

My favorite part of the conversation was how he looked at me like I was the crazy one for suggesting that the government, not aliens, were watching us.  Priceless.  And completely, utterly wacko. 

Long live Batshit Crazy McGillicutty..

Batshit Crazy McGillicutty Escapes A Wintry Grave*

*By a "wintry grave," of course, I mean that temps are expected to dip overnight into the mid-30s.

Preface: I now live in an old apartment with a crazy-assed landlord and, other than the two other medical students I have as neighbors, a motley assortment of peculiar tenants. My upstairs neighbor, who's name I cannot remember -- and never will because the rules of decorum dictate that far too much time has passed to ask her (a misdelivered parcel is my best hope for insight) -- anyway, whenever I see this neighbor, she always asks if she's making too much noise. I politely tell her not to worry because I'm not home too much, that I'm often on campus studying. We share a little polite, if awkward, laughter because, truthfully, she's exceptionally loud and she knows it and because I feel too bad about forgetting her name to be honest and tell her that I think she should practice her godforsaken Irish dance at a time later than 5:30am. After the awkward laughter that trails into an even more awkward silence, she'll ask a little bit about medical school, about Winning Run, about my dog. Wash, rinse, and repeat the exchange almost verbatim the next time we bump into one another which is typically about every two weeks. The last few times we've spoken, I think she's been especially sauced as she's been a little more emphatic than normal (and slurring her words a little) about being sorry for the noise. I've been a little shorter with her because, well, it's a charade with which I've grown tired. For the love of all things holy, you make noise; it's a crappy old apartment, it goes with the territory, so, when you see me, please just smile and say "hello" or nothing at all. In summary: she's kinda* crazy (by "kinda" I mean "without a doubt, full-on, batshit crazy"), a semi-cougar, a lush with a boyfriend, a live-in daughter, and sometimes a granddaughter, who does laundry every day, and loves, loves, loves Irish dancing or clogging or jumping jacks at all hours of the day.

So, with the back-story complete, let's step back in time to an hour ago...

I was in my office with my headphones on and the door shut trying to settle into a study groove for the evening. As the temp has been getting pretty brisk overnight, I'd been closing the doors and using a space heater to warm the rooms instead of turning on all the baseboard heaters. So, I was in the office doing my thing and hanging out with Dylan who's with me while Winning Run wraps a major deadline on her project. All of a sudden, Dylan freaked, got really agitated, paced, and kept staring from me to the door and back. When I took off my headphones, I heard someone pounding on my door. It wasn't the forceful pounding knock of an authority figure but something, I don't know, a little crazier but just as urgent.

On taking a few steps into the hall, I heard a voice pleading for help, for me to open the door. Naturally, my adrenaline went through the roof. Then, I realized that it was from my back door and not the front like I'd expected. It was a woman's voice; my upstairs neighbor, I thought. As I pulled back the vertical blinds, I was a little freaked out by what I might see. To my surprise, I saw my neighbor in her sock feet, jeans, a fleece standing there beating on my sliding door, still pleading for me to open it.

I cautiously opened the door a little.

"Oh thank God," she said. "I've been locked out on my deck for two hours. I'm freezing, I can't feel my feet."

"What? You've been locked on your balcony?," I asked. "How'd that happen?"

"I went outside without my phone or my keys and I got locked out. I've been out there for two hours. I'm so cold. I was yelling for help and throwing stuff down to get your attention."

"I've been in my office on the other side of the apartment, with my headphones on studying. I thought you were just moving furniture or something."

"I was throwing all sorts of stuff down and yelling for help."

"How'd you get down?," I asked.

"I through about throwing some concrete through my sliding glass door but I ended up using my Christmas lights to do a MacGyver and climb down."

"What?" I leaned forward to look past her and, sure enough, a single strand of Christmas lights hung there limply, a remnant of a seemingly festive escape. "You climbed down on that?"

"Yes. Oh my God, I'm so cold. I can't feel my feet. I think I have frostbite."

"I'm pretty sure that you're gonna be okay," I offered. "I think that, for frostbite, it's got to be pretty cold, like below freezing."

"Really?"

"Yeah, you'll probably make it," I assured her. "Now, how the hell did you get locked out by the sliding glass door? It's got a thumb latch on the inside."

"I don't know, it just locked me out. Can I use your phone to call someone to bring me my keys?"

"Sure."

I got my phone and let her make a couple of calls. Her lifeline tonight (other than the Christmas lights) was her recently (like a few hours ago) ex-boyfriend. I offered to make her some tea to help her warm back up but she declined.

"You must think I'm crazy. I mean, really, who does this?"

I pondered my response for a minute.  "Ahhhhh...well, I'm just happy you didn't hurt yourself when you climbed down." (Why, yes; yes, I do think you are a big bowl of crazy.)

"I'm sorry to interrupt you. Just go back and study and I'll just stay here until he comes with my keys."

"Thanks but I'm just gonna stay here with you until he comes."  There was absolutely no chance in hell that I was going to go in the other room and leave her unattended.  Who knows what I would've found when I returned?  Hell, she probably would've managed to get herself inextricably wedged in the over-sized chair in my living room or to simultaneously shatter all of my picture frames.  So, I stayed in the room, maintained a safe distance, and opened the front blinds so that we could see when her spare key arrived.

"So, what do you do?," she asked. "I notice that sometimes, you're dressed in medical clothes."

Luckily, her near-fatal frostbite prevented her from seeing the look of disbelief on my face as this was a topic that we'd covered many, many times before. I had a sneaking suspicion what was on the horizon but I chose to play along.

"I'm a student at the medical school here," I told her.

"What are you studying to be?," she asked and she didn't mean what specialty.

"A doctor," I said.

"Oh, that's great."

"Yeah," I replied.

"I hope I don't make too much noise upstairs," she said.

"It's okay," I lied.

My goal was to get her the hell out of my apartment as fast as I could. Luckily, after ten or fifteen minutes of this, her newly "former" boyfriend arrived with her key. As I was going to open the front door for her, I turned to see her yell thanks and bolt right back out my sliding door, stumbling and nearly falling on her way out.

"What the hell just happened?," I asked the newly silent room.

And that, my friends, is why you should not do drugs or drink.