Heavens above!

It's a rite of passage, or it used to be:  young couple gets married and lives in apartments until they get enough cash to move to a house.  

It was that way for Peggy and me when we got married in the waning days of the Nixon Administration.  It was all right.  For one thing, neither of us had the vast collections of things that we now curate.  We didn't have many possessions or much money. So, we lived in a couple of rental units.

One of them was in a garden apartment complex; we were on the second floor there and right next to the laundry room. This, of course, led neighbors to knock on our door looking for change for the washer and dryer.  It got to where it was easier for me on Saturdays to wear one of those aprons (left) and a paper cap that said CHANGE.

And all current and former apartment dwellers know about the joy of finding a parking space.  They plan the parking lots around those places, seemingly, with one spot per apartment, and when someone throws a party, you'll be lucky to park at the VFW hall's back lot two blocks away.

And then one night, while I was in the bathroom brushing my long luxuriant wavy locks (so wavy that many of them have waved goodbye) I heard the top end of a conversation that two neighbors were having.  Her voice, although raised, was not clear, so I don't know what she said, but it was just like being in the audience at a Tennessee Williams play when I heard him say, "I don't care if you're going to be a (woman of easy virtue), but tonight, you're going to be MY (woman of easy virtue)."

And I always wondered how things went for those two crazy kids during the remaining three weeks of their marriage.

Which brings me to a blog I stumbled upon while riding my web surfer one day.  It's called Dear Girls Above Me, and it contains the thoughts and opinions that a certain guy would love to share with the women who rent the apartment above his.  They're loud, and, it would seem, not terribly bright ("So the right to bear arms has nothing to do with acting like a bear?")

The writer of the blog hears these gems all day and then writes his imaginary responses.  It must be a thin ceiling that divides him from them.  Check out the blog and see how he's doing!