3 Crazy Things

Crazy things happen on our street ALL the time. Sometimes we get REALLY lucky and crazy things happen right inside our building. Think of it like a front row seat to a reality television show on cable. Who needs to pay Charter a small fortune each month? Just come hang out in our building for a week. You're bound to see something good. Now I've already told you about the junkie overdose, the weed and 'shroom growing operation, the man living in the basement, and the base thumpin' DJ set up-here are 3 more crazy things in no apparent order:

Bleach Girl

Bleach girl and her husband lived upstairs. She was a pharmacy student. He was a med student. And they definitely thought they were too good for the 'hood. You would say hi to these two in the hallway and they would look right through you. My kids would say hi and these two wouldn't respond, prompting my kids to start yelling, "Mommy! They didn't say hi back! You said that's rude!" He wore scrubs ALL THE TIME. Presumably so that everyone would know he was a doctor in training, but all it did was let everyone know that he was a real asshole. Anyway, you'd think that these two would have some amount of brain power between them, right? Wrong. I came home from work one day and my apartment smelled like the pool at the Y. I heard water dripping somewhere. I followed the sound to my bedroom where I found bleach water dripping through our bathroom ceiling and into two closets. Our red towels were bleached. Our shower curtain was bleached. Clothes in the closet were bleached. I went upstairs and knocked on the door. Pharmacy girl answered. I said, "You do know that bleach is pouring into my apartment and staining everything, right?" Her reply? "Yes. My tub was clogged so I filled it with bleach and water and it overflowed."

What?! Apparently they are letting anyone into medical and pharmacy school these days. I asked if I could come in and help clean it up so that it would stop ruining my stuff sooner, rather than later. She wouldn't let me into her apartment. (Which of course made me think she was secretly cooking meth in her bedroom.) Anyway, they never offered to replace the stuff they ruined and they never even apologized. You can't fix stupid and you apparently can't fix asshole either. Karma got them in the end though. They moved after a shotgun wedding (Medical school apparently didn't teach them about contraceptives either.) and never left a forwarding address. So some of their wedding gifts were left on the porch during the time we had mail theft issues going on in the 'hood. I totally saw the neighbors going through the boxes and said nothing. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I certainly wasn't about to provoke the neighbors on their behalf. Lesson learned: If you live in the 'hood, you are not too good for it, regardless of what you may think. Also, karma's a b*tch. 

9-1-1 Knife Girl

Not so long ago, there was a scuffle in the hallway. I'm pretty sure it was all one family, fighting with each other. A girl came running down to my sister's apartment and told my brother in law to call 9-1-1 because her mother was being attacked with a knife. Because you know, your neighbors knock on your door on the regular and tell you things like this, right?! No?? Maybe that's just in our 'hood. Anyway, 9-1-1 was called. The po-po broke up the family knife fight. I think it was all a big misunderstanding-maybe a family dinner gone wrong. Lesson learned: Knives are for cutting meat, not for cutting Auntie Edna during a family dinner. 

The Transformer (which was definitely more than meets the eye)

I was at church on New Year's Eve (What?! That's not how you celebrate the New Year?! See, not everyone in the 'hood is a heathen.) when our tenant called. (Yup. We are landlords. We actually own a little slice of the 'hood.) Apparently the transformer by our porch was sparking so the National Grid guys shut off the power to repair it. Which caused a mass exodus from the nearby 3 deckers. Soon the light pole was surrounded by locals yelling at the line worker about how he was ruining their NYE. I'm sure he was loving his job at that moment. Because he certainly wanted to spend NYE on Grafton Hill being yelled at by the locals. The best was the guy who came out yelling about how his baby was crying and how was he gonna heat up the bottle in the micro if the power was out and now his baby was going to STARVE TO DEATH!! Yup. Starve. To. Death. The power was on in less than an hour. No one starved to death. And I assume the line worker went home and got good and drunk. Lesson learned: National Grid is not in the business of trying to kill your baby or ruin your party. They just want to fix the power and get the hell out of Dodge. 

So that's it. Three more crazy things in a gold mine of crazy. It's all good in the 'hood. Always.