Apartment Living

Here is today's prompt: Write about a less-than-remarkable aspect of your life.

Living in an apartment seems to be pretty run of-the-mill. I don't live in one now, but when my husband and I were first married, we lived in an apartment in my hometown in Maryland. I think everyone should live in an apartment at some point in their lives, just as they should have to take the bus or subway to work. These are experiences that make us well-rounded people. The subway for obvious reasons - especially if you're a writer. Where else will you observe such colorful characters? But I digress...
Living in an apartment is a great way to start out, or to remain if you like. Now that I own a house (or more accurately, am paying on a house) I often long for my apartment dwelling days. Yard work which can be enjoyable is never ending. Did you know that when you cut the grass it grows right back? Seriously, sometimes in a matter of days. I hate the winter and yet I find myself longing for winter to come, just so the lawn will cease to grow.
Apartments are much less work, but also allow for rich social experiences. In a neighborhood in suburbia such as I live in currently, it is entirely possible to go a week, a month, a year without any interaction with the neighbors. I was actually naively looking forward to getting to know the neighbors in my subdivision. We moved in, no came over to say hi. No welcome wagon with a casserole or homemade cookies. After we had unpacked, we had a garage sale. That was the first time that people actually came to talk to us. When there's a possibility that you might posses something that they want, they'll introduce themselves.
In apartment living, neighbors are part of everyday life. If nothing else, you have to pass them on the stairs (or in the elevator). We lived on what was called the terrace level. It was slightly below ground. We never opened our windows because they were at ground level. If I pulled up the blinds, I saw people's feet going by - very strange. We lived in an apartment complex called The Chimneys - "all the apartments have fireplaces," they told us. Ours didn't. There were only 3 apartments on our mini underground floor. You might think that only 2 neighbors doesn't make for much excitement, but you'd be wrong. One neighbor was e man in his lat forties that was on disability. Is being an alcoholic a disability? He would be drunk at 10:00 in the morning. One night on my way in, very late, I saw him passed out on someone else's porch. Our other neighbor was even more colorful a character. He was an older man from India. Maybe five feet tall and round. He cooked with curry, so much curry that when you opened the front door to the building, the smell almost knocked you down. I don't even know where to begin with him. He would force-feed us his homemade concoctions. You couldn't take it home and eat it, he would make you stand there and try it. One night he invited guests over to OUR apartment for dinner. He just showed up with a fully cooked dinner and two guests!
This man was a nut-case. He believed that he had written the lyrics to several popular Beatles songs, had invented the jet engine and that Jackie Kennedy was his illegitimate sister (does she look Indian to you?). Perhaps my favorite interaction with this man was when he showed my husband and I a picture of a young black woman (with short hair) and claimed that this was a picture of him in his youth.
Somewhere I have a list of all the insane claims that he made. I knew even then that I wanted to be a writer and that someday this information would come in very handy. So sure, living in an apartment may seem as ordinary as sliced bread, but the people that you end up living with are nothing of the sort.