Nasty Neighbors: A Cup of Sugar or a Chocolate Bar?

Neighbors. One of the most adored and dreaded aspects of moving to a new home. And after one month of moving into my apartment, I’ve determined tonight that I don’t like my neighbors.

What was the final straw you may ask? In a long list of grievances, tonight, a Wednesday night as I was returning home for the evening, my upstairs neighbors were throwing a party. And one of their guests was relieving himself of the evening’s main source of attraction — I’m assuming beer here — straight off the side of their balcony. Right onto my doorstep. Had I timed it correctly, it could have been my shoe. Or my face.

In a fit of rage at this moment, I’m debating the best way to approach the situation. To begin, I scared the poor guest away as I approached my door.

“Hey, people live here you know!” were my exact words of protest.

Another male, I’m assuming a friend or acquaintance of the culprit, smartly said as he fumbled with his cellphone, said, “I told him not to do it.”

“You guys are assholes anyway,” I said.

“Why are we assholes?”

“You’re rude,” was my clever response as I unlocked my deadbolt.

This was not the first time I’ve witnessed public male urination. Living in a college town occupied with mostly drunken happy-go-lucky future graduates and workforce of tomorrow, beer, known to cause frequent trips to the bathroom, is the beverage of choice on the weekends.

I, myself, am not opposed to the occasional party and the instantaneous intoxicated illustrations of idiocy, but the guy pissed on my territory.

My upstairs neighbors have thrown get-togethers fairly frequently during the past month. On the weekends, and even on Thursday nights (as most students try to schedule their classes so as not to have any on Friday like I have done this quarter) it’s completely acceptable. I have no problem with that. But on a Wednesday when I have a quiz to study for the next day, on a Tuesday when I have a midterm half my grade for the quarter is dependent upon, and on a Sunday, a day reserved for rest and recuperation for the week ahead, it is NOT OK.

It.
Is.
NOT.
O. K.

I haven’t called the cops when the music has been so loud I couldn’t hear myself think nor when the girly giggles turned into shrieking screams. I’ve heard other neighbors pound on their door and ask them to turn down their bass, and in response, they taunted the requests.

I recall one Saturday when a verbal fight ensued between two females over two hours with the main dialogue centered around two words — the second word was “you” and the first one started with F. I’ll give you one guess.

Another evening some guy screamed the name “Bill! ... Bill! ... Bill! Bill! .. Bill! Bill! … Bill! Bill! .. Bill!Bill!BillBillBill! Bill!” for five minutes until I yelled once through my screen door, “Shutup!”

He then moved onto the name Emily for another five.

As I’m writing this, I realize I’ve distracted myself long enough that I think the party upstairs made its way uptown to the bars. And as angry as this rave may sound, generally, I’m not an aggressive person. Chances are, even if I had been provoked, I would not have taken further action tonight to deter future rude interruptions to my life from my neighbors upstairs.

For now, I’ve decided to settle on a deep contempt, an attitude of negativity toward those who live above me. And because I’ve vented, I don’t even have the rage or motivation to concoct an evil scheme for countering with inevitably needed revenge. Maybe at best, I’ll come up with a nasty nickname. Got any suggestions?

If I’m ever looking to borrow a cup of sugar, maybe the neighbors across the corridor will have some they’re willing to share. Then again, they have a yipping Chihuahua that may have taught the urinating guest that it was OK to pee in other people’s yards. Instead of sugar, I’ll ask for a chocolate bar. At least then there won’t be any more yipping.

Friendships are forever, one way or another

This first account is not my own.

Rhi tells me she was my first best friend. We met in kindergarten, but Rhi didn’t share her memory of our friendship with me until our senior year of high school.

Apparently, after I became buddies with Stuart who I allied with to terrorize the other girls in the class, I told Rhi I didn’t want to be friends with her anymore. And I forgot all about our friendship. Literally.

In first grade, Stu and I had different teachers and soon forgot about each other. As most elementary school children do so well, I made a new best friend. Lauren and I promptly became inseparable.

Until of course, second grade. Then it was Amanda.

In third grade I met Marcy.

In fourth, more or less, it was Marcy.

In fifth and sixth, just Marcy.

And in junior high, you guessed it, Marcy.

Our friendship continued into high school, and we were the only two graduates from our class to come to Ohio University. We hadn’t planned on going to college together. In fact, we probably needed a break from each other. But fate had decided that we were going to take one more step in our lives together.

But Marcy is transferring schools this fall. It finally hit me this week. Fate has changed its mind.

I never thought I would be so bothered by her leaving. I’ve never had to imagine my life without her, and I’m realizing how I’ve taken her for granted.

Our friendship isn’t perfect and never has been. I get on her nerves, and she drives me insane. I whine about her to my other friends, and she whines about me to her fiancée. Sometimes I don’t understand how she can be such a spoiled brat and so sweet at the same time, and she wonders how, in her words, I’m the dumbest smart person she knows.

But as with any best friend, I know she’ll be there no matter what. It’s Marcy who understands who I am and how and why I’ve come to be that way. We’ve shared so much laughter and so many tears.

We’ve learned so much together — how to handle disappointment and triumph, how to overcome adversity and to latch onto moments of hope, how boyfriends and even other friends come and go, and how they always will come and go. We’ve learned the value of love and how life isn’t anything without it. The love of a friendship is not the same as that of an intimate partner, but it can be just as strong. Marcy and I, we’re not just friends. We’re like sisters, you see.

I don’t really remember my life without Marcy. We’ve played over 500 basketball and volleyball games together, and I can’t even begin to fathom how many practices we’ve had and how many miles we’ve run since junior high. We’ve watched so many movies and had so many sleepovers. We worked together every day last summer, each others’ only female companions in a male-dominated job.

This summer will be our last together.

But I know that when she gets married, I’ll be there. When she has her first child, I hope she wants me to be there too. When she finds that perfect job, I hope I’m one of the first people she calls. And the bad things, I want to be there for those too.

We’ve learned another new thing this year — how to live together. We’ve known each other for 11 years, but it took us two quarters to make peace with our furniture arrangement, our opposite sleep schedules, our conflicting study habits and our unique friends. But we’ve made peace as we’ve always done with our differences.

I hope that when we’re old and ornery we’ll share even more laughter and tears. I hope strangers still mistake us for sisters, and our relatives and friends still mix up our names.

Marcy’s moving on this year, but our friendship won’t. We’ll still have our phone calls, our e-mails and IM’s. And our memories. We’ll always have our memories.

Friendships. Sometimes they’re painful, but mostly they’re unforgettably joyful. Here’s to one of my oldest and closest friends. Marcy, I love you, and I wish you only the best.

Obsessions, from the Cavs to shoes

I never thought I’d have to compete with a guy named James for a boyfriend.

I’ve only known Brad for about a year. I knew he was a Cleveland fan, and that Mr. LeBron James is his savior. I just didn’t realize that Brad was obsessed. For the past few weeks, his life has revolved around the NBA playoffs. I was relieved when the Cavs lost to the Pistons in the final and seventh game of the second round.

Everyone has his or her obsessions. Sometimes they’re short-lived. Sometimes there is more than one at a time. For me, one has always been shoes. I am a woman. But there have been others, like the 30 pairs of sunglasses I collected one summer to match all of my shoes. For a while, I collected paperweights. Recently, my fascination with dill pickle flavored potato chips has receded into a nagging urge now and then.

When I was a child, YMCA soccer was the thing. My freshman year of college it was Ohio University club hockey. But all of my flaming obsessions have burned down into interests or mere memories. Except for the shoes. I can’t figure out how and don’t really want to get rid of that.

The spectrum of obsessions across the human race ranges from alcoholism to Zen. Some obsessions turn into addictions. And from my brief case study of Brad, I conclude that as a Cleveland fan, the Cavs, the Indians and the Browns are exactly that — an addiction.

I can see the signs, the first of which is denial. Most Ohioans know that Cleveland professional sports seem to be cursed. The last time the Indians won a World Series was 1948. The last time the Browns won the Super Bowl was 1964. And the Cavs? They’ve never won an NBA title. Ever. This year was the first in 13 years that they made it to the second round of playoffs. Brad’s not in denial of the so-called curse. He’s in denial that he lets his livelihood depend upon the yearly fates of those teams.

The second sign: he has missed work to watch a game. He called off last Friday to watch game six of the second round. It was only by chance that I know (his friend Dan informed me, unaware of his betrayal), and I only know of this one instance. I was afraid to ask if there had been more.

Other signs include impaired judgment of the performances of the players, a preoccupation with each upcoming game, withdrawal from family and friends, and changes in personality, mood and behavior. Though usually those symptoms only occur from limited amounts of time, they have potentials for becoming obnoxious problems.

OK, so maybe I'm exaggerating ... a little.

But, should it bother me that some of his friends planned their Fantasy Baseball draft strategies more meticulously than their own weddings, husbands and wives included?

Should I be worried that the conversation of our last dinner date consisted of Brad quizzing me on my professional sports knowledge (of which I have very little) and then of him trying to teach me the names and positions of the Indians’ starting line-up?

Should I study the line-up so when he quizzes me again, my response doesn’t go something like this:

“Okay, I can give you Victor Martinez. Catcher. I think. Then there’s the guy all the ladies love, Mc…um. Mc…um. McGrady? Oh no, that’s his first name, Grady. My bad. I forgot. There’s only one other guy I remember talking about, the designated hitter. Well, crap. I can’t remember his name either.”

Honey, I’m trying to understand, I swear.

I just don’t get it. And it’s not that I don’t get sports. I love basketball and soccer. I love playing sports. I even enjoy watching college sports. But there’s just something about professional sports that doesn’t click. I don’t mind watching a game every now and then. I don’t have any trouble understanding the games. I’m just not interested.

But apparently, if I’m going to keep dating Brad, I’m going to have to learn to love Cleveland sports.

At least a little bit.

“I don’t live here anymore.”

That’s what I said to my sister when she asked me to answer the telephone during my visit “home” last weekend. I almost made my mom cry.

I hate going home.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my family. But going home is like crawling back into a box from which I’ve just escaped — no light, no fresh air, no room to breathe or to stretch.

I don’t live there anymore. I don’t get phone calls on the landline. There’s not any food in the refrigerator that I like. I sleep in the guest room. My sister lives in my bedroom, and my brother parks in my garage space. They’ve rearranged the furniture and bought a new television.

Sure, I keep my off-season wardrobe in a closet and my childhood memories shoved in the attic; it isn’t the material things that matter anyway.

What does is that my brother and sister don’t need me anymore. My parents treat me like a guest in my “home.” I’m welcomed as a visitor at my church and at my high school. I haven’t been gone that long.

I’m only 20 years old. I’ve gotten a gleaming glimpse of growing up. Sometimes my friends and I reminisce about elementary school “so long ago.” It was more like yesterday.

I left “home” years ago, not just the two since I’ve been at college. I left when I was nine-years-old and I realized there was more to life than long division and spelling tests. I was studying for the geography bee, and that’s when it hit me. “Hey, there are other countries in the world that don’t speak English.” It hit me when I was 16 and my first boyfriend told me he cheated on me. “Hey, love isn’t easy like in the movies.” It hit me when I lost some childhood friends over a high school spat, just weeks before graduation. “Hey, even if you know someone, you might not really know them.”

It kills my mom when I say “I don’t live here anymore.” And I learned this weekend that it’s one more thing I’ll keep to myself when I go “home.”

My parents are good people. But they are not open-minded. I hate going home because they expect me to be what I was, not what I’ve become, not the changes.

And Lord, have I changed. I want to consider a religion other than Christianity. I want to share my new political views with them. I want to tell them I have gay friends. I want them to meet my boyfriend, and I want to ask my mom questions about sex. I want to tell my siblings what real life is like and how just saying “no” isn’t how it works.

As I drive past the cornfields a few miles from the house, I start to get that cozy warm feeling. I’m escaping from work and school for a few days. It’s a safe feeling. And then it’s gone. The coziness is replaced with emptiness, a reminder of what was missing in my life before, when “home” was the only place I knew. But instead of subsiding after a few minutes, maybe hours, the feeling stays until I leave again. I don’t hear the country music and the pick-ups rumbling by that I want to remember. Instead, I hear racial slurs, sexist comments and expressions of homophobia. And it burns in that emptiness. Instead of giving me that warm cozy feeling, going home scorches my heart.

I wonder why my family doesn’t see it too.

Some would say, love will be enough; it won’t matter how I’ve changed. Goodness, it’s the 21st century already.

But what if they don’t accept me? Even if they do, they might say, “Oh, it’s a phase.” They might “accept” me, sure — but not the new way of thinking I own, not the real me. And that’s what matters. I just want them to listen, to really listen and to think about it. I just want them to try to understand. I could live with that.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. It hit me when my mom asked what I did last weekend and I couldn’t tell her because, “Hey, my mom still thinks I’m 12 years old.”

I should be grateful that I have a family that loves me and cares about me. But what’s it matter if I can’t be who I really am?

I hate going home.

Yes, I need to pay attention — In a million little ways.

I’ve been duped, tricked, schemed, scammed, bamboozled, hoodwinked and hoaxed.

And, well, OK, so I’ve discovered that I live inside a self-inflicted bubble of ignorance.

I know I should watch the news, read the papers, browse the Net, or do anything that’ll at least give me the headlines for the day.

But there are those days I don’t. And somehow, I learned from “South Park” of all shows, not only that I’d been made a fool but that I could have avoided it altogether.

Recently, I read “A Million Little Pieces,” and I believed every word of it. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t four months after the book was exposed as false.

In case there’s someone out there who did the same thing I did, at least now you can be comforted by the fact that you’re not the only one.

And for those of you who haven’t heard about it (please God, let there be someone) here’s what I’m talking about:

The author of the book, James Frey, wrote “A Million Little Pieces” as a memoir of his struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. He said he meant to create hope for those struggling with similar afflictions and to share his story with the world.

Oprah Winfrey picked it as one of her favorites and the book topped best-seller lists, becoming an instant favorite of many who read it.

Then in January TheSmokingGun.com, a popular investigative Web site, exposed Frey as a fraud. After further investigation, he admitted that he had in fact “embellished” parts of his book.

So why am I writing about this now? Because I’m one of the idiots who fell for it. But mostly, because I fell for it after all that had been publicized. It wasn’t until last week when I was watching a “South Park” rerun in which the incident was referred to, that I even had a clue.

And I still didn’t get it. I asked the friend I was watching the show with. She didn’t say anything for a little while. At first, she looked at me like she thought I was joking. And then, then she said it out loud. “You’re kidding, right?”

Those were NOT the words I wanted to hear.

I completely fell for Frey’s heroic story. He endured a root canal without anesthesia or any other painkillers for goodness sake! Even if I hadn’t liked the book, how could that not leave an impression on me, true or false?

Of course, now that I think about it, a root canal … without anesthesia … or painkillers … and if I remember correctly, he stayed conscious through the entire thing.

Or maybe he didn’t? I can’t remember. Let’s pretend he did. It’s easier to prove my point, just like Frey claims he did.

I should have known at that point. Even if I do live in a bubble. Without the Internet. Or television. Or newspapers. Or ears.

But no, I spent $14.95 at Target that I could have used to buy three pairs of underwear or an automatic jar opener or enough stale Easter candy to give me six cavities instead.

It was just sitting there on the shelf, such an honest-looking sky blue — what’s with the hand covered in sprinkles on the cover anyway? I was just going to let that go, but now that I know the story isn’t true … oh, excuse me, “embellished.”

I was inspired by that book, and, no matter what defense Frey gives, it was every element of that story that sold me. It made me believe that no matter what I came up against for the rest of my life, things could always get worse. If he could do it, I could too. Classic.

All the while, I’m searching for something or someone to blame.

The publisher? Sure, in part. Frey? Of course.

TheSmokingGun.com and others have criticized both. And poor Oprah? Well, ha ha, I say. I don’t like her anyway.

As for me? The only person I can point a finger at is myself. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a good story.

The worst part is, I don’t even really like “South Park”.