by Jake Espinoza. Photographs by Sandi Elle of www.sandielle.com
I recently walked over to my neighbors house at 11:30pm on a Tuesday night and politely asked them to stop having so much fun.
The problem wasn’t with the fun specifically, but it was with the amount of noise that was involved with the fun. Judging by the amount of noise the fairly small amount of people were creating, it seemed like they were having A LOT of fun. On this night it was unfortunately too much fun for someone living that close to me. My alarm had five hours until it woke me up for work, and the level of fun they were having was keeping me awake.
It made me feel old. I never thought I’d actually get old. I’m not old yet, but walking to my neighbors house made me feel old.
It also made me feel sorry for every person who ever lived within a block of me while I was attending college. What a bunch of ass holes we were. Cars parked under our balcony regularly received showers of Pabst Blue Ribbon, E&J Brandy, cigarette butts and vomit.
Many of our neighbors loved the convenient location of our apartment complex because it was only a block away from the library. It was also a block away from Taylor’s, Rennie’s and their frequent drink specials.
If the party didn’t start at our apartment, it generally stopped by at some point and usually took its coat off and overstayed its welcome. We had a lot of fun. Way more fun than my neighbors were having and with a lot more guests.
My roommate said he once forgot turn the radio off when he left the apartment. What is even more unfortunate for our neighbors is that the cops were at our door when he returned. This sort of action would have probably warranted some sort of fine. Instead of sticking around to receive his fine and deal with the police, my roommate walked past them and to an apartment of some of our friends up stairs. “Those assholes again?” he said as he walked by, shaking his head and playing the cops like a couple of jerks.
The towel rack in our bathroom was ripped off our wall so many times by people holding on to it in an attempt to keep balance that we stopped putting it back up. On a few different occasions people had stories written about them because of the trouble they got into after leaving our apartment. A fight that started at our apartment ended up being covered by the evening news with the headline, “Riot breaks out at Taylor’s.”
We stopped by our apartment after moving out and the new residents told us, “Wow, you guys are the guys that use to live here?” before asking to take a picture with us.
Everyone was invited to our parties, but our parties were not for everyone.
I assume our neighbors gave each other high fives when we were out of town and sang songs in praise of how wonderfully they would sleep that night. They must have enjoyed the mornings free of speaking to the apartment manager about getting us evicted.
Hopefully they are all working great jobs now and realize how living as our neighbor has made them better and more prepared for life. Life comes at you fast but if you can ace an economics final at 7am after being awakened by a screaming coke head (not me) at 3, 4 and 5 o’clock in the morning, you can most likely accomplish just about anything.
If they don’t use that experience in their interviews they should.
“So tell me about a time you overcame adversity?”
“Well, in college my neighbors had friends who did a lot of drugs and would wake me up at all hours of the night by standing outside my door screaming at the world about how mad they were Bush got reelected.”
Birds of a feather do not always flock together. Some birds can just appreciate the beauty of many different feathers.
There is only a wall separating those living for the moment from those preparing for the morning. It’s necessary to stay on the responsible side of that wall if we want to find a secure place in this world. Not everyone gets the opportunity to see the perspective from both sides. Some live in the moment for ever and never give themselves the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Others are so focused on their future that they never give themselves an opportunity to embrace the present.
A balance is needed in order to maintain sanity.
The laughter I heard at my neighbors reminded me of my long nights, and I feel fortunate that I still have friends to occasionally share these nights with. But now my goals are different. Now I’m looking to the future and hoping I didn’t live in the moment too long.
Either way I’ll be Out Here.