Sunday, February 24, 2008

Crazy Old Coot

There is an old (i would guess maybe 70's-ish) lady that lives in my apartment building. She lives on my floor in an apartment next to mine, and I'm pretty sure that she lives alone. It took me a long time to discern this because every once in a while, she flips her shit. She'll open the door to her abode, yell some nonsensical stuff (the same thing every time...a three "word" phrase that i can't even attempt to transcribe, but if it were morse code, it would be a dot dot dash...in that it's the same word forcefully said twice, and then a longer concluding word that really drives it home) and then slam the door. 5 - 10 minutes later, she'll do this again. This can go on for hours. Sometimes she does it every few days, sometimes its every couple of weeks. For a long time, i thought she was arguing domestically with someone. I eventually realized that the yelling is not directed at anyone. Whenever i see her she seems like a perfectly nice adorable old lady...however, I have been caught in the awkward position of either exiting or entering my apartment while she's about to go off. She is conscious enough of the goings on to just kind of stand there with her door open until i pass, and then continue with her crazy talk. i do my best to avoid this situation anyway, by waiting at my door until she does the yelling, and then running out in the spare minutes i have between.

Ok, so now that you're all caught up with this crazy old coot, let's get to the meat and potatoes of this post, shall we? Whenever my old lady neighbor goes into one of these inexplicable spells (oh also...i assume that this lady has lived in this building a really long time, because others [there are a lot of lifers that live here] don't seem to bat an eye whenever this happens) its usually during the day or evening hours. Last night, she did it at...judging by how deep of a sleep i was yanked out of, around 4 or 5 am. in the morning. and it was LOUD. she was angrier than previous times and i could tell was putting all her old lady effort into projecting and guttural yelling. this went on for SO LONG too. i kept fading in and out of sleep, but the fact that i could hear very clearly her through two doors and over music prevented me from really falling asleep again while this was happening. I'd say about an hour passed and i could not come up with anything that i could possibly do to make this stop. i wasn't going to yell at or hit an old lady, but i also wasn't going to confront a crazy for fear that she would pull a knife or walker on me. Finally, after the hour (or more) i heard someone trying to calm her down. i couldn't hear the conversation, i'm not sure how anything got resolved...all i know is that the nightmarish screaming that was giving me murderous thoughts had ceased (until next time at least). do you guys think next time it happens i should dart out of my apartment, spray her with a water bottle, and then run back in? or do you have any better suggestions?

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