Since I am moving at the end of the month, I'd like to present some memories of the nice people I've shared a building with for the past seven years, and the fine things they've done to make our little community a friendlier place.

- One time, a woman screaming "We're gonna shoot the stars out of the sky tonight!" tried to get into my apartment. Luckily the door was locked. She said, "If you don't open up, I'm gonna call your commanding officer!" Then she took off her pants, and started beating them on the floor, holding them by the cuffs. Soon the police came, and forced her to the ground and cuffed her. I watched the whole thing through the peephole while eating oatmeal.

- There used to be an older, retired couple who lived down the hall from us. Every morning, you'd see them in front of the Kom-On-Inn waiting for it to open. They had a quilted bag in which they'd carry their booze home from the liquor store, usually holding each other up as they walked. When the manager reprimanded them for drinking on the lawn in front of the building, the guy grabbed the manager and started choking him. They were evicted, and before they left, they pissed in the elevator.

- We once had some next-door neighbors who were evicted 37 days after moving in. Those were 37 days of pure hell. They were three 19-year-old boys who threw giant, vomit-filled parties for high-school kids. Every time they'd leave their apartment, they'd scream "Whoooo!" because the hallway has an echo. So, you'd hear "Whoooo!" about eight or nine times a day. They also liked to use the hallway as their personal space for talking on the phone in their underwear. When they were thrown out for underage drinking, pot smoking, and forcing the police to come to the building over five times per week, they called the building manager a nigger and smeared a bunch of garbage all over his door.

- One tenant's ex-boyfriend showed up one night, broke her jaw, then smashed about four or five car windows, including Cathie's.

- What do you do when you're mad at your boyfriend who's down the hall at his friend's apartment? Why, you lock him out of your apartment, then climb out the third-story window, manage your way down to the ground, and escape into the night, of course. What does the boyfriend do? Why,he calls the cops because he thinks you're dead inside the apartment, of course. What does the management do? Why, they give the cops a mile of red tape and refuse to come down to the place and open the door, of course. What do I do? Why, I sit there listening to the cops pounding on the door from 2-4 a.m., until the boyfriend realizes what she probably did, scales the building and climbs through the open window. Of course.

- I am not nearly good enough of a writer to describe the tenant known as "The Picker." But, I'll do my best. The Picker was a 6'6", 275-pound schizophrenic/insomniac with white-blonde hair like a 1980s pro-wrestler, who got his name for going through the Dumpsters. He wasn't looking for cans, or anything like that. He was just interested in looking at other people's garbage. Other hobbies included: 1) sitting in his car in the parking lot for hours on end, 2) listening to extremely loud death-metal, 3) wearing mirrored sunglasses, hockey jerseys, and handcrafted ensembles such as jeans with the knees cut out and replaced with spider-web of black yarn, or matching bandanas tied around his head, knees, and elbows. All of this was just plain creepy but tolerable, until he stopped taking his meds. Then he became horrifying. He grew he hair long and developed a crazed, maniacal, potentially violent expression. They took away his car. Rumor has it he was evicted after telling some little kid "Come over here and let me kick you in the nuts" or something like that--I'm not sure of the details, and it's heresay anyhow, but it's completely believable.

- Then there's Dogboy. I don't remember how Dogboy got his nickname, but it fit him well. The funniest thing about Dogboy was that every morning when he got in his truck to go to deliver Domino's pizza, he'd bring a huge mixing-bowl full of cereal, a quart-sized glass of juice, and a colander full of grapes into the truck. It would take him a while to logisitically place all these items in the car so that he could manage them while driving. But there was nothing funny about the truck--a black minitruck with neon green "Peeing Calvin" decals, and the worst car alarm in the history of electronics. Some nights, the thing would go off all night long. Actually, it wouldn't go off, it would threaten to go off. It would say, "Alarm will sound if you don't back away. Last warning. Alarm will sound if you don't back away." Over and over. The owner of the vehicle, of course, had no idea this was going on. And no one knew what apartment he lived in, so they couldn't go get him and tell him to shut it off. I once went out and climbed on the truck and rocked it, so that the alarm would go off, so that he might come out, so that I might "speak" with him. He never came out, but the Picker stood and watched me. Eventually, he had to be threatened, which reduced the alarm incidents by about 95%.

- Many people know about the highly publicized meth-freak incident, and I wish I had a link to the news story. Last winter, this guy who was high on meth scaled the outside of the building. He broke into an apartment window where he found a baby, which he tried to smother, because he thought the kid had the mark of the devil on its head in barcode form. I'm unsure of the details, but I know he scaled the building again the next night, this time completely naked, carrying his clothes, in sub-zero temperatures. He broke into a different apartment, where he took a woman's keys. He stole her car and escaped to Hermantown, where he was eventually found and arrested.

I think that'll be enough for now. But this is only the beginning.
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