My high school was in a three-story building in the middle of downtown, and one side of the school faced an old apartment complex. I was admittedly zoning out when I noticed someone coming onto the balcony with a huge trash bag. This immediately caught my attention as I thought that was weird.

The woman glanced down and then dropped the bag over the side. Ah, she was throwing the bag into a dumpster on the ground. She went back in.

Then, she came out with a TV; it was a CRT, so probably about fifty pounds at minimum. She surely wasn’t going to…

She was.

Down it went.

CLANG!

BAM!

Then, the wailing of a car alarm caught the attention of everyone in class as the woman hurriedly ran back inside and slammed the door. Everyone ran to the window to see what had caused the noise. There was a dumpster, and in front of the dumpster was a car, with the TV making a big dent in the trunk of the car.

The teacher managed to somehow corral a bunch of rubbernecking teenagers to finish what was left of the class before sending us on our way.

I never saw the woman on the balcony for the rest of the semester.

I’m not sure what’s relevant or not to this story, but in case it’s relevant, I am a big guy; I am about 6’6″ and rather muscular. I work outside all day, so while I am white, I’m pretty darkly tanned, so sometimes people mistake me for different ethnicities. 

My wife and I recently moved into a new apartment. One Saturday morning, she leaves to go run some errands for a few hours, so I am home alone doing some odds-and-ends chores. I leave my apartment to go downstairs and collect our mail only to find it hasn’t been delivered yet, and when I return, I realize I have locked myself out. I guess the coffee hasn’t kicked in because I didn’t grab my keys, and because I was just going to the mailbox, I have no wallet, phone, or anything else.

I decide to sit down in the hallway and wait for my wife to come back. While I’m sitting there, after about fifteen minutes, the apartment manager from the new management company comes by. I have never met him before. 

Manager: “Hey, uh, can I help you?” 

Me: “Not really. I locked myself out, so I’m just waiting for my wife to get back.”

Manager: “Well, you sitting in the hallway is making some people uncomfortable.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m not bothering anyone, and I don’t have any way to contact my wife to meet somewhere, so I’m just waiting here quietly.” 

Manager: “Look. We’ve gotten a number of complaints, and I really need you out of the hallway. How about this?” 

He goes to unlock the apartment door. 

Me: “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Are you going to unlock the apartment?” 

Manager: “Well, yeah. You said you were locked out. This way, you get out of the hallway, and people stop complaining.”

Me: “I haven’t shown you any ID or any records of any kind. Heck, I don’t even have a piece of mail with the address on it. Would you really let anyone into the apartment just because they said they lived there?”

Manager: “…”

After that, he just left. Once my wife got home, she let me in, and between the overly-trusting apartment manager and the under-trusting neighbors, I think we will be starting the apartment hunt again.

The apartment complex I live in is over fifty years old — and so is its plumbing. We’re in the middle of a total renovation of all the plumbing in every apartment and with that, completely new bathrooms. We get to choose from a standard offering of tiles and furniture for our new bathrooms. If the existing bathroom is less than ten years old, there is also the option — for free — to restore features outside the standard. In my case, it’s a full-length mirror framed by the same tiles as on the floor (which is a four-color checkerboard). The rest of wall is white tiles.

The project manager discusses solutions with me and makes 2D and 3D drawings of my new bathroom, including the mirror. (Recreating the floor would extend the work by a week, so I say no to that.) I have once again chosen white tiles for the wall, expecting a frame of black ones (the floor tiles) around my mirror.

The renovation for each apartment takes five weeks, during which we have no indoor plumbing, so I have found temporary accommodation elsewhere. Before I leave, I notice that the workers themselves have taped printouts of the 3D drawing to my main door to refer to while they work. 

I go home once or twice a week to pick up mail and check on progress. On the Saturday at the end of week four, I see that they have tiled the bathroom. And there is no mirror. The wall it is supposed to be on is just the big white tiles. I email the project manager and include my photos of the bathroom wall and the drawing on the door, asking if it is too late to fix this.

On Monday, a slightly panicked and very apologetic master bricklayer calls me. We discuss solutions and arrive at a compromise. He can get the mirror itself in place, but he cannot do the special tile framing around it. I’m happy I’m at least getting the mirror, so I agree. 

Master Bricklayer: “Do you have the perspective drawing for the mirror?”

Me: “…You mean the one hanging on my door?”

I could practically hear him blushing when he realized what he’d asked.

I’m sure the work week started with a lot of yelling, but I now have a mirror.

I’m outside my apartment building, kneeling on the sidewalk. I have a bag of candy in front of me, and I’m wielding a hammer. A neighbor comes up the walk, sees me and pauses. I whack the candy with the hammer, shattering it.

Me: “Hey, [Neighbor].” *Whack*

Neighbor: “Hey, [My Name]. Whatcha doing?”

Me: *Whack* “Baking a cake. This part is loud, so I just do it outside.”

Neighbor: “Your cake baking involves a hammer?”

Me: “And two days for everything to finish.” *Whack*

Neighbor: “Heh, sounds fun. Save me a piece?”

Me: “Sure!” *Whack*

Two days later, I knocked on his door with a big slab of my cake for him and his fiancée to share, complete with the shattered candy on top. His fiancée later came up and asked me how to make the cake for his birthday because they’d both loved it so much.

I saw her outside a few days later, a bag of candy at her side, and a hammer in hand. If someone asked what she was doing, she’d laugh and tell them she was baking.

I live in an apartment complex with another one right outside my windows, with some grass and sidewalks in between. I love people-watching and often take my laptop to do some work on the balcony and see if anything interesting happens. Usually, there’s nothing special, though I see some cute dogs and cats and sometimes stumble across some neighborhood drama.

(I don’t consider myself nosy, but writing this all out, it turns out I might be a little.)

Earlier this week, I went out to people-watch, and fifteen minutes after I started, I saw all of the entrances to the other apartment complex open. A person with a dog walked out from each. That already made me smile because they looked like they’d rehearsed it so the doors would open perfectly in sync. They all sort of met in the middle, let their dogs play on the grass, and then just stood there talking and laughing.

One of the ladies started talking about how you should smile at your dog because they are amazing at recognizing facial expressions and will often smile back. Then, I got to observe like four grown people all standing around their dogs, smiling at them with everything they had, and then instantly looking back at the lady who started it and gushing about how cute the dogs were with excitement only comparable to that of six-year-olds on their birthdays.

It was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

The group met up a few more times this week, and they always chat about their dogs and how life is going. It’s really fun to listen to them, even if I might look like a creep.