AND THE WALLS COME TUMBLING DOWN!
I used to live in .. I think the appropriate word here is "SHITHOLE". I loved it! The walls were falling in and the roof leaked when ever it rained, and the electricity would go out in storms because the wiring in the walls would get so wet, it would trip the fuse, and I would have to truck through the dead carcasses of animal decay under the house to the fuse box at least once a week. There was no air conditioning, and no heat. The landlord scared me, so I rarely complained about anything. The place was the size of a Doc Martin boot shoe box. The rent was $200 a month and water was included, so being in my undergrad this was great financially.
I lived there for 2 years alone, and then on my graduation day, my best friend in the world moved in with me. His bed was seriously 4 inches from mine, and the closet was so tiny, that the truck of his car was his main closet.
It seems odd now, but our apartment was the hang out spot and we would generally have at least 5 people there on any given night, which meant there were always people walking all over our beds. I think that was the 2 years of my life that I always had tons of energy and I never stopped laughing. Ok, no thinking about it, those were the best 2 years of my life. Justin and I had the best time, even though the place was all cramped and people in the projects lived in more humane conditions, we loved it.
There were 8 apartments total, all better than Justin's and mine, but not much, and we all treated the place as a commune. There was an understanding that the 8 apartments in the house were expected to be a community and we all treated it as such. We never knocked on anyone's door. We just showed ourselves into various apartments and occasionally got to see our neighbors going at it, but no one cared, we would just get up and put our clothes on and commence hanging out. We would have cook outs together, and when the music major practice his piece we would all turn off our radios to listen to him, and there was always an odor of marijuana seeping in from the walls that would direct us to where we needed to be hanging out, we could play pranks on eachother easily, since we never locked thier doors, we had a roof we could drink on, and pee on if you are Melanie, and there was ALWAYS some one to hang out with. Melanie moved in and that is pretty much where our friendship started. Ben Hill was a magical place, and I miss it.
*insert crappy story of Justin's last chapter in the story of Marci* and I ended up moving into a house down the stairs from the original apartment. The landlord had no choice but to fix the place up and a year later,
Matthew moved into the place. Matthew respected the rules of no knocking and would get come home from work every night and come into my apartment sit down and dispel all his problems to me. I got accepted to grad school and moved out a few months later and the landlord, shocked I had lasted on the property for almost 5 years, told me "this place will fall down without you".
WELL......... The place did yesterday, and I think it is the funniest thing in the world. It is the whole IF I CAN'T LIVE THERE NO ONE CAN type of thing. Apparently, melanies old apartment came crushing down into my old (now Matthews) apartment.
The place did fall down with out me!
