Every day is a gift.
People have said that your life flashes before your eyes when you are about to die. This, as it turns out, is a lie. Hollywood smoke and mirrors; a Christmas fable that we choose to believe in because the world is a cruel, cruel place.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
I’m not dead, by the way. I mean obviously I’m writing this blog post. And no, I’m not your friendly neighborhood ghost coming back to haunt you for not subscribing to my blog (although that would be way cooler and by the way you totally should).
Nah, just here to enlighten you on what happens when you leave passive-aggressive notes. Which, just in case you weren’t aware, don’t actually work on sociopaths.
I have this neighbor, okay. He’s loud, obnoxiously loud. And I have high suspicions that he is actually a sociopath.
Exhibit A) He listens to shitty rap music at every odd hour of the night and morning and I never see him in the daylight which makes him not only a sociopath but also a vampire. With really awful taste in music.
Exhibit B) He often yells to himself. Just for funzies. Just for shit's and gig’s. Just loud shouting for no particular reason other than to reassure me that he is indeed a crazy person.
Exhibit C) I once heard him listening to police radio on blast for an entire hour during a manhunt for a suspect to a shooting on Colfax. So that’s normal.
I could ramble off at least a dozen other instances of his insanity that will surely terrify my mother when she reads this.
Hi, Mom.
But back to the life flashing before my eyes bullshit.
After a particularly frustrating morning of getting zero sleep as a result of my neighbor’s assholery, I had finally drawn a line in the sand. I wrote a sticky note. It read,
“Please resist the urge to scream, moan, or listen to loud music between the hours of 11pm and 8am. Thank you.”
I said please and thank you.
I left for work and hoped that he would get the hint and have some respect for the 20 some-odd other humans that have to put up with his shit on a daily basis.
Fast forward to 8pm that night as I was sitting quietly in my apartment grading papers and preparing for another teaching day when Crazy McCrazy Face arrived to his door to find the note. He went off the handle; running down the halls yelling to someone else that this couldn’t possibly be the property management company and that it was utter bullshit.
He then began banging down my door. Because it was obviously me. I had asked him once before to please keep it to a dull roar the night before my half-marathon. Because it’s kind of hard to obtain REM cycles when you are blasting the newest rendition of “Big Booty Hoe” over there.
You motherfucker.
So he’s banging on my door. Banging, banging away. So much so that a picture frame falls off my wall and onto the floor.
Oh, let me just open the door. You sound friendly.
No. Are you fucking kidding me? I don’t have a death wish, okay? I just want you to stop being an asshole.
I didn’t make a peep. Instead I retreated to the corner of my kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, and contemplated the likelihood that I would survive if presented the unique opportunity to jump out my second story window.
As he kept banging I mustered what little strength I had in my lungs and announced to him that I was calling the police.
“911, what’s your location and emergency?” A friendly and calm operator asked.
I gave him my address and told him I was pretty sure I was about to be axe murdered by my vampire/sociopath neighbor. All for leaving a passive-aggressive sticky note.
This is how I die.
We had a good run.
And oddly no, it wasn’t my childhood memories that passed through my mind in those moments of panic. No. I didn’t think about all the trips to Europe I wouldn’t take or about all the happy thoughts I’ve had in this life.
Nope.
Do you want to know what I was really thinking?
1) I have unpaid parking tickets.
2) Wells Fargo is going to be pissed when I defer on my student loans.
3) But thank GOD I had time to watch that one last Nicholas Sparks film.
My practical mind took over and I pictured how inconvenient it would be for my friends and loved ones to have to go through all my belongings after my hilarious and untimely death. They just moved me into this place, too.
Moving all those boxes again would surely throw out my dad’s back.
The most I could hope for would be for someone to make sure that all my sloppy rantings got published into a book someday in my honor. But I’m no Anne Frank, okay? Most of my poetry is written on the backs of napkins and receipts and my two “novels” most surely consist of mainly spelling errors and bad grammar.
As for the Sociopath Vampire, he’s been relatively tame ever since the police talked him down and off the crazy ledge. He still blasts his horrendous music like all the time, but has at least kept the screaming at 3am to a minimum.
As for me, I won’t be leaving any passive-aggressive sticky notes any time soon.
(Posts sticky note on bathroom mirror for self to read, “Please resist the urge to communicate with sociopaths unless you are really that curious about the afterlife. Thank you.”)