Just after I graduated college, I lived in a two bedroom apartment with three other girls (one in her third year at school, the other two just like me -- recent graduates with crappy jobs). Our upstairs neighbors were four college boys. I don't think they had furniture, because they seemed to use every square inch of that floor. Sometimes they'd practice goosestepping in heavy work boots. Or maybe it was tap-dancing. Stamping out ants?
They also liked to hold impromptu wrestling matches in the middle of their living room. I used to imagine them as a litter of puppies all rolling around on the floor together. We often expected to see the whole lot of them come crashing through our ceiling during these little romps, and I am sure that if this happened the boys would've been completely unfazed. They probably would have looked up briefly, shrugged, and then gone back to their scuffle. Same match, different floor.
Their favorite game (when they weren't playing Pig Pile on the Living Room Floor, that is) was to toss a(n American) football back and forth from the back bedroom down the hall to the living room, then from living room out onto the adjoining deck -- all the while holding shouted conversations about sports, school, girls, and who had been the most drunk the previous evening. One of the guys in the living room constantly overshot (or maybe one of the ones on the deck was trying to catch while wearing greased oven mitts), so every few minutes someone would gallop downstairs, fling open the door, slam it shut, find the football, fling open the door again, slam it shut, and pound back up the steps.
I wonder where they are now. I wonder if they think back fondly on their college days, or if they spare a thought for the four young women who lived beneath them and whose collective fervent wish was that they all go straight to hell.
Oh, hey, look what I grew!
2 comments:
When Mr. P and I were in college we lived below 4 people, 2 gals, 2 dudes and 3 dogs, including a Great Dane puppy. They were LOUD stompers, and we too, wished them untimely deaths.
10 years later, I ran into one of the said loudies, and she was awesome, and the Great Dane had died. I was really sad.
When we first married, we had a stompy upstairs neighbor. I worked 3-11 shift, and their late-night parties always kept me awake. I never said a word, though, because they were really nice otherwise.
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