Close Encounters of the Worst Kind

They say “good fences make good neighbors,” but for those of us who fall into the Renter category along with some 34 million other U.S. households, that little piece of folksy wisdom could stand a little updating. Something along the lines of “good plumbing habits make good neighbors.” Specifically, perhaps, “Not flooding your upstairs bathroom and then not telling your downstairs neighbors makes good neighbors,” but that might be a little too wordy to work as folksy wisdom.

Yesterday afternoon at approximately 4:00PM, just when I was settling onto the couch to work up the latest Local News Tuesday post, just as Expat was headed to take a shower and change into more Appropriately Professorial Attire so as to cut a dashing figure at the evening’s lecture and dinner to follow, just as we were getting on with our Very Important Lives, Expat made a discovery.

“Honey? Come here for a minute.”

I walked from the couch to the bedroom to find Expat crouched on our closet floor, smelling his hand.

“Uh-oh. Is one of the Pre-Kids protesting?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. What do you think?”

I crouched, too, and pressed my palm onto the cheap beige carpet that covers the floor of every apartment in our entire Yuppie Apartment Complex. It squelched when I pressed it. Regardless of how much protesting it was doing, no cat had that much pee in its bladder. An exact, dark replica of my handprint was left when I pulled my palm back and sniffed. “I think it’s water. I wonder where it’s coming from.”

We stood up, looked around, scratched our heads. I walked around to the bathroom, which is just on the other side of the closet. I flipped on the light and stepped in the puddle. “Shit.”

The water was coming from the air conditioning vent over the sink. It had completely covered the floor in front of the sink vanity. It had saturated the carpet in front of the bathroom. It had crept down the wall and oozed into the closet, saturating the carpet there as well. It was leaving long, dark stains across the ceiling. It was creating a bubble in the plaster next to said air vent. And it was still dripping fairly steadily.

I called the apartment complex office while Expat hauled clothes off the closet floor. I told them to hurry. Then, I decided to go upstairs.

Our upstairs neighbors are a very nice middle-aged, middle-class couple with two Mercedes and three school-aged kids. We think at least one of the parents works for the new Mercedes plant. The kids come home from school, lock themselves in while they wait for their parents to come home, and then, from what Expat and I can tell, either: (A) jump like monkeys from one substantial piece of furniture to another; (B) shoot sizable, thudding arrows at the closet door; or (C) reenact death-defying action movie sequences in the living room, some of which require very energetic footraces and the overturning of said substantial pieces of furniture. On any given evening, we sit on our couch and determine their afterschool activity by the severity of the wild swinging of our overhead living room fan and the amount of plaster dust that sifts down from our popcorn-blasted ceiling.

The daughter answered the door when I rang the doorbell. I’d guess she’s about 13 and is definitely the Middle Child.

“Hi, I’m Sparky, your downstairs neighbor and I was just wondering if your bathroom was, perhaps, flooding.”

“Well, my brother came home and found it all covered with water. We weren’t sure what happened.”

I put on my very best Understanding Adult smile. “Oh, how weird. Well, do you know if the water is still running? I mean, can you tell where it’s coming from?”

“Um, well . . .”

“Tell you what—can I come up and have a look?” I walked past her as she opened the door, her face relaxing with visible relief at not having to explain the situation.

The bathroom in question was locked. Younger Brother (about 9 or 10) was stamping around on the carpet outside, soaking up the water with what appeared to be a baby blue bed sheet. Middle Sister pounded on the door, telling Older Brother (about 14 or 15) to open up. He did. Their bathroom wasn’t just covered, it was submerged in what I guessed to be a little less than an inch of water. The cheap hall carpet, while gradually absorbent, seemed to be acting as a partial dam when faced with such a large quantity, allowing the water level in the bathroom to rise enough to make the plastic wastebasket bobble a bit in its place beside the toilet. The toilet in question was sitting silently—in fact, no running water could be heard at all, which I took to be a good sign—but the noticeable brown smudges around the upraised toilet seat didn’t add much to my comfort level.

“So what happened again, exactly?”

Middle Sister slid her eyes from my face to the wall just beyond my head. “We don’t know. My brother just came home and found it like this.”

“Ah, right. Okay, well, I’ve already called maintenance and they should be stopping up here first, so when they come, be sure to let them in, okay?”

“Yes ma’am. Thank you.”

I headed back downstairs. Expat went ahead and took his quick shower. Then the maintenance men began showing up in a steady caravan. I explained what I knew. They nodded. “Plugged toilet,” they said.

“All of this?” I said, waving my hands toward the heap of soggy towels I’d used to soak up the water, to the stained and suspiciously bubbly ceiling, to the squelching carpet.

“Yes, ma’am. Toilet stopped up and overflowed.”

“They said they don’t know how it happened—that they just came home and found it like this.”

“Told us that, too. But you caught it just in time—it hadn’t soaked into the underlay.”

“So it probably happened this afternoon?”

“Probably.”

“And I’ll bet they just didn’t know who to call.”

“Most likely.”

“And I’ll bet they tried flushing the toilet more than once.”

“I’d say. Probably embarrassed.”

“Probably.” I nod. I can understand this. Kids get embarrassed. They worry what others will say. They worry that they’ll get in trouble.

Expat understands it, too, but can’t quite get past something. “Poo water? We had kiddie poo water dripping into our bathroom?”

“Well, it was clean water by then, you know—just overflow from the toilet.”

“Which was clogged with kiddie poo. I don’t want no kiddie poo water dripping on my head!”

I know my husband is serious when he trots out the double negatives.

Yet in light of this, in light of all of this—the poo water, the bulging plaster, the severe and wild swinging of the overhead fan—I can sit down on my couch and smile.

We close on our new house in about 1 month. A 2,100 square foot house. A monument to 1970s wallpaper that surely deserves a post of its own.

Before that can happen though, we have a few updates from Local News Tuesday and the Black Warrior Files that I need to get back to.

And before that can happen, I need to go by some renter’s insurance. You know. Just in case.

Away-Game Weekends, or Who I Saw at Barnes & Noble Friday Night

It happened. I told you it would.

It happened tonight as I sat in a plush overstuffed chair in the cafe reading (alternately) the Barbara Kingsolver book I'm assigning next semester for my freshman class on acting locally and the serial young adult fantasy book that I've been stealing peeks at in every chain bookstore we've been in since this summer. I read a lot of books that way—bits at a time, two books at once. Admittedly, I was indulging more in the book on the 6th grade reading level, but it discusses socially concious actions and treating te environment with respect as well . . . just the environment in a magical kingdom far away. With mind-talking ponies. And dragons.

It happened just like I predicted in a post in the not-so-distant past. There I was, sitting in my chair, and Daine, the main character, had just turned into a squirrel but had turned herself back into a person again with the help of a magical badger and her mind-taking pony when all of a sudden—

"Well, look who it is."

"An English teacher sitting in a bookstore reading a book on a Friday night."

I blinked and tucked my embarrassing paperback under my right thigh, pulling the respectable hardcover onto my lap and opening unconvincingly to some page in the middle. "Oh! Hi, guys!"

Two of my 18-year-old male students grinned down at me in my overstuffed chair.

"Whatcha reading?"

"Just this book for one of my classes next semester."

"Oh yeah? Hey, what are you teaching next semester anyway?"

Crisis averted. We chat for a few minutes about my spring class schedule. I introduce them superficially to Expat, who's sitting in his own comfy chair next to me, engrossed in his book about the evils of Blackwater. Expat grunts. My students wave and venture off to their own Friday night browsing.

I slip my paperback from under my thigh and start to open it when another passage from Kingsolver catches my eye. She makes her own cheese. In her own kitchen. With milk she buys at the grocery store. I didn't think you could make cheese with milk you buy at the grocery store . . .

Expat gets up and wanders away from his chair. I'm reading about the New England Cheesemaking Supply. Expat sits down next to me and heaves a huge sigh and I look up and see the wrong sneakers, the wrong jeans, the wrong color shirt and—

"Rocky!"

Rocky is grinning at me like a little kid who's just managed to get you with salt in your coffee instead of sugar.

"Hey! Stella and I are on a date—like an actual date, without the child—and we came here and look who's here already!"

Rocky is a fellow instructor at Flagship State U. Stella is his tenure track wife who teaches in the composition program with Expat and the reason that they're here. Rocky is from Philly. He runs every day at 5 in the morning, except a few weeks ago because his cruising baby daughter pulled a solid metal lamp onto his foot.

Stella appears and laughs nervously at herself and Rocky and their failed date. "It's been so long since we went out that we don't know what to do when we go out." She wrings her hands and glances around anxiously.

"Expat and I are kind of on a date. But we just come here for fun whenever."

Expat walks up and we all laugh again and I slide my young adult fiction into a side cushion in my overstuffed chair.

I told you it would happen.

Local News Tuesday: Wear the Old Coat, Buy the New Book

Last week, a glorious thing happened here in Tuscaloosa, Our Fair City: we finally got a bookstore. A real bookstore. One that doesn’t specialize in used textbooks or local SEC football team merchandise like framed watercolors of dead coaches or that giant wall clock my dear, dear husband keeps threatening to buy. One that actually sells books that you want to read. One with a CD section that features more than Kelly Clarkson and Unfortunate Country Albums. One with a café and a café menu chock full of overpriced, Not-Quality Lattes (NQL) and overpriced, Calorie-Laden Gooey Things (CAGT). One that epitomizes Corporate America and all that it wrong with mass market book publishing today, where you can get everything that Oprah and Dr. Phil have ever written, along with a smattering of Real Literature and excellent calendars, bulk greeting cards, and Nifty Bound Writing Journals perfect for aspiring zen haiku-ists.

Expat and I haven’t been this excited about a Barnes & Noble since we lived in Small Town, PA, where an evening trip to the B & N did double duty as both a hot date and a research excursion. Even then, though, there was a small, local alternative bookstore, one that was just a short walk from campus and that actually made really good tea. One that still sold used books you actually wanted to read, not just last year’s edition of your organic chemistry textbook (because it was definitely not my organic chemistry textbook. Maybe yours. Maybe my college roommate’s.).

But here in Tuscaloosa, Our Fair City, there is no small local establishment that purveys anything other than T-shirts with witticisms like “Rammer-Jammer is Everything” and “Got 12? WE DO!” and approximately 8 million copies of that Sports Illustrated issue that came out over a month ago featuring a profile of the new coach written by our local, tarnished celebrity journalist. Not exactly stimulating reading material.

The entire English community at Flagship State University is as giddy as a kindergarten class with a new playground. When the invitations for the special sneak preview/open house from 6–9PM (the night before opening day) appeared in our faculty mailboxes on campus, the buzz around the department was audible, a persistent simmering hum. When we got word that the composition committee was, in fact, supposed to meet that very same evening starting at 5PM (and we all know that committee meetings always take more than an hour), the grumble among some instructors was drowned out only by the wailing and gnashing of teeth of others. In Tuscaloosa, Our Fair City, missing your chance to get first dibs on the NQL, CLGT, and that heady New Store Smell was something worth gnashing about.

The sneak peak was Tuesday. The official opening was Wednesday. Expat and I held off until Wednesday afternoon. I was worried it might be crowded and it was somewhat busy, but we could still find a good table in the café. We felt like we were cheating on Capture, but even so, we sat. We did our respective work for our respective classes. We drank our respective NQLs. We browsed our respective favorite sections. We ogled the cookbooks. We sat and read books that we had no intention of purchasing, just to read them, just because we could.

There are dangers, of course, to the Glossy Corporate Bookstore in the Small College Town. Dangers that might only be seen by an English faculty member, dangers I had forgotten since leaving Small Town, PA. What would I do, for instance, if one of my many students caught me indulging myself with children’s picture books or quizzing myself in the latest Cosmo or devouring some Really Bad Fiction? The glory of living in a Mid-sized Midwestern City, like Madison, and not having a very high-profile job was the anonymity of it all—the ability to walk into Borders and not talk to or otherwise engage anyone except the Seattle’s Best barista. The ability to check out for the day, drop into an overstuffed chair, and read with reckless abandon until the store closed or I was too hungry to concentrate and the CLGT offerings just weren’t cutting it. Here, though, here I have to be on my guard. I have to be glib and ready to talk at a moment’s notice. I have to remain alert.

So is it worth it? Is it still worth getting excited over the glories of the Corporate Chain? Is it worth rolling around and reveling in that heady New Store Smell and drinking inadequate coffee, even though it makes me feel like I’m cheating on Taylor the Latte Boy and his fabulous local coffee establishment? Is it in fact worth wasting a Local News Tuesday update to regale you with my own sick, twisted, entirely contradictory Glossy Corporate Fascination?

I don’t know. Let me finish this Pumpkin Spice Latte and this issue of RealSimple and maybe read through this new cookbook while I wait in line to pay for my new Nifty Bound Writing Journal and I’ll get back to you.