Playing The Mature Part

When I moved into my one bedroom apartment in August there were several signs that my apartment complex housed a lot of college students; its close proximity to a city college, the model rooms furnished with two twin beds (despite being a complex of all one bedroom apartments), and the overwhelming number of popular skateboarding brand bumper stickers. It became all too clear that I was living in a dorm. At first I was excited about reliving my freshman year, I look back fondly on the unhealthy and borderline disgusting life I had in the dorms, but when my living situation started teetering towards fraternity life I was less than pleased.

One day I went to my car in the parking lot and found a seagull standing atop my car eating something. I walked towards my car hoping to scare it off to eat somewhere else and after a struggle and failure to lift its meal with it, the seagull flew away. As I came closer to my car, I found its food to be a half human eaten/half seagull eaten piece of fried chicken. Considering the seagull could not lift the chicken away with him in flight I came to the conclusion that some trickster had put the fried chicken on top of my car. I drove away with the fried chicken still on the roof hoping it would fall off with a quick turn, completely oblivious to the possibility of it streaking down my front windshield with one sudden stop. Thankfully this did not happen, but the last thing I wanted was Double Down grease all over my car so I took my ice scraper (useful in all climates) to push it off. In days following the fried chicken incident, I have seen a large rock on top of a Mini Cooper and three pizza boxes stacked on top of a Ford Explorer. I’m either dealing with fraternity-like pranks or a very strong and stealth seagull.

Doing laundry in the dorms freshman year was one of the worst possible experiences. If you were one minute late to change your load you would find some perv handling your delicates by throwing them wherever they pleased and leaving it to collect the mildew smell of wet laundry. Because I had forgotten about this frustration and because I thought I lived in an apartment complex not a dorm, I was surprised when someone stole some of my clothes out of the laundry room a few weeks ago. It is hard to pinpoint potential suspects because there was no pattern to their crime. They stole a pair of basketball shorts, a tank top, one sock and a Colorado Football shirt with my sorority’s letters on it (okay, the sock could have been a mistake on my part). I don’t understand why someone would want my sorority football shirt, I’m fairly certain I’m the only Colorado Alpha Phi in my apartment complex. And if I’m not I would smack that sister right in the mouth for stealing my t-shirt. Because that’s what sisters do.

Then there is the blaring music from my neighbors two doors down. I WOULD be able to hear each lyric clearly if it wasn’t for that neighbor’s broken Spanish accent trying to sing along. The only thing worse than having to hear someone else’s music is hearing them botch the lyrics to American classics. “American Pie” didn’t originally have a mariachi feel to it, did it?

With all of these adjustments of living in an apartment complex (I’ve only lived in houses previously), I can’t help but feel like an RA in this community. The boys living above me should not be playing Guitar Hero at 2am, some of us have to get up early for work. And by work I do mean free labor. And the girls living next to me should switch their reversible doormat from “partying” to “studying” a little more often—I’m becoming concerned about their grades.