Colin and I were reminiscing about our first apartment, the one in Seattle we rented in July of 1992. We'd signed the lease for exactly a month because, frankly, that's all the time we had. In August, I would head to Washington, DC for a two-year internship, and Colin would return to college in Pennsylvania for his senior year.
We laughed yesterday, remembering the "bed room," the room that fit a bed, and nothing else. Not even a pair of shoes.
We were in heaven, though. We'd come with nothing, but what did we care? A nearby thrift store held everything we needed: two forks, two spoons, two knives, a couple of glasses, and a big cooking pot. Breakfast was cold cereal, or bread we slipped under the broiler and topped with butter and chunky jam.
That first night, when we went to sleep, we were giddy. Fate had clearly kissed us. I mean, what were the chances we'd find an apartment in a new city for a single month?
At exactly 5:00 o'clock the next morning, we got a brutal wake-up call. Beep! Beep! Beep! The whole apartment started to shake. An ear-piercing sound, a rumbling, and we both sat up in shared horror, no idea what was happening.
A quick look out the window told the story. The story of the noise, and the reason the apartment had been vacant. The reason the landlords had agreed to rent it to us for just a month. It's because this apartment, our apartment, was directly over the building's five dumpsters, and three times a week, at 5am sharp, a giant truck would come, back up beneath our window, lift the dumpsters up to our "bed room," and give them a nice, sturdy, prolonged shake. One at a time.
And with that, we realized, we were officially the dumbest people ever to rent an apartment in Seattle.
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p.s. Amazing response to the book giveaway. Entries will close tonight.
