The People Upstairs

Well hellloooo again. Sorry for the lapse in blogging. I was feeling a bit overexposed after our birthday party, in multiple ways, and was going through some internal blogging struggles. Is blogging as narcissistic as tweeting, I asked myself. Am I being a hypocrite for frowning on social networking and tweets, but still posting the mundane details of my life on a blogspot? The answer is most definitely yes, but the fact is I no longer care. So without further ado: I cooked this post up whilst lying in bed at about 12:15am last night praying for sweet sweet peace and quiet, but receiving just the opposite. As I lay there plotting unspeakable things, it occurred to me that I haven't lived in peace and quiet since I was 18-years-old. The day that I moved out of my childhood home to be exact. Since then my nights have been filled with various excitements and noises and bad music tastes all coming from walls to my left, right, front, below, and the soul crushing ceiling above. Full disclaimer: I am an only child who was not raised to withstand noises of any kind while catching my required 8 hours of beauty sleep. I'm convinced my parents had my room hermetically sealed at night so that no noise could ever pass the threshold. Because of this my chances of being murdered while sleeping have greatly declined, but my chances of murdering someone else while trying to sleep are at an all-time high. Did I mention I was single? Snore around me and the Exorcist will look like your BFF.
My first home away from home was perhaps the most jolting living situation of all: the co-ed dorms at WMU. For the first time in my young life I was required to share a room, a very very small cement walled purple carpeted room, with another being. Luckily for me, Nikki Loveless was the perfect training roomie. She was neat, quiet, and very respectful of other people's things...even psycho only children who still didn't know how to use a can opener or do a load of laundry. We bonded quickly and went on to enjoy four years of co-habitation. Cleary, Nikki wasn't the problem. The Co-Eds upstairs with a penchant for all things AC/DC at 8am were the problem. I'll never forget the first morning I was blasted out of my ceiling high wooden loft by the sound of bells. Not just any bells. Hell's Bells. Bong, Bong, Bong, Bong. This went on each and every morning for too long to remember. I think I would have adapted fairly quickly to the wailing rock riffs of AC/DC if it weren't for the hoodrats next door keeping me up all night with their dorm room parties and one-night stand traffic. I was a fairly well adjusted freshman, but I think whatever was left of my youthful innocence flew the coop the first time I saw their "Boy Chart" on the back of the door. But after that first semester, some sort of modesty must have come over them. They quickly learned that cement walls don't automatically equal sound proofing. From that point on, I was forced to fall asleep to the haunting sounds of "Take My Breath Away" at full volume. On repeat. It became the love song of choice for, well, their many moments of drunken love. I like the Top Gun soundtrack as much as the next 80's child, but somewhere between my breath being taken away and the bells of hell were my missing hours of sleep. If only I would have known how the next 10 years would unfold and how I would be forced into using dark circle cream at the ripe old age of 25, but I was wide eyed and ear plug free. How soon that would change!

Dun Dun Dun....stay tuned for the next installment of The People Upstairs!