Bedbugs, BB Guns & Burglaries

Adventures in Apartment Living

by Jennifer Maugle

Many of us have had the opportunity to meet some interesting and sometimes disturbing characters living just doors away. This is especially true when living in apartments under shared roofs and I am not even about to tackle landlords. Regardless of where you live, you have to wonder if you ever truly know your neighbors. Prior to taking the plunge and purchasing a house in 2007, my husband (then boyfriend) and I cohabited in a 2 bedroom apartment located in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia. We called this place “home” for five years and we can recall both good and not-so-good memories.

First, a quick recap of good memories and experiences: a fairly inexpensive place to live, use of pool and tennis courts (none of which we utilized – ever), free gym, numerous parties and gatherings with family and friends, we got got engaged while living here, and in our final years of apartment living we were privileged to have the company of good friends living just down the hall. This allowed for many hangouts, movie nights, dinner dates and more.

But let’s move on to the not-so-good memories, shall we? Sometimes when I look back on our time there, I have to just shake my head and laugh (and feel blessed to have the home we now live in). As anyone who lives in or has lived in an apartment knows, there could be a variety of characters (um, neighbors) to deal with or come across.

Enter “Eddie”. Eddie, his significant other, and their baby boy moved in across the hall from us and seemed like a nice enough, young family. I was asked once if I would ever babysit (they did not know me whatsoever) and when I said, “No, I am 27 and have a full-time job”, they were surprised and thought I was actually 17. As they settled in across the hall and time passed, we began to notice the distinct smell of pot coming from their apartment, the hallway and landing of the staircase. I realize that this probably isn’t an uncommon thing but it still irked me that it was seeping under our door fairly often and oh the fact that they lived with a small child who was inhaling second hand weed.

We soon realized this wasn’t much of an issue compared to what was about to happen. Fast forward to the time when our good friends and neighbors had their car stolen right out of the parking lot beneath their window. I probably shouldn’t go into great detail but suffice it to say we all know who did it or at least who was associated with the incident. The car was found in northern New Jersey, stripped of its parts.

Let’s continue. Who doesn’t get annoyed by bugs and infestations? Well we did, that’s for sure. It was bad enough when the cockroaches began parading under our front door from across the trashy-smelling neighbor’s apartment. We sprayed and killed them one by one and even came up with names for some of them: Cocky (the original), Jocky (the quick one), Stocky (the slow, dumb one), and Papa Roach too. Not surprisingly, when the tenants moved out and the apartment was cleaned, we didn’t get any more roach visitors.

However, the worst was yet to come. One day, we noticed that we were starting to get bites and welts all over our arms and legs. They didn’t itch too much but it was summertime so we just thought we had a mosquito or four stuck somewhere in our bedroom, sucking our blood in our sleep. Well, as the bites didn’t go away and we never found any mosquitoes, we weren’t sure what was going on until one night when we put a bedroom light on in the middle of the night. Much to our shock and dismay, we saw a plethora of little brownish-black bugs crawling on our bed as well as on us(they were too light-weight to even feel). I about lost it. To make a long story short, we had a nasty case of the bedbugs. We had pest control come numerous times to treat our apartment and our possessions (these buggers are incredibly hard to fight). We had to throw away our bed (where the bedbugs infest, multiply and leave black spots of excrement under the mattress edges) and sleep on our futon in the living room for approximately two weeks. How and why did these blood suckers come to us and where in the world did they come from? Who knew that bedbugs actually existed in real life and not just in the catchy kids’ phrase “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite”? We eventually learned that they came from a recently evacuated apartment down the hall. Articles about bedbug invasions began
appearing all over the Internet and the news, especially being an issue in New York. They were easily being brought over unknowingly from foreign countries, becoming an issue for hotels and travelers, bedbugs attaching to luggage and so on. Although they pose no major threat of disease or harm, they are highly annoying and difficult to get rid of. Bedbugs my friends, are not cool.

And what would apartment living be without the danger of fire? It was around midnight one evening when the smoke alarms sounded out in the halls. We didn’t immediately rush up and outta there given that these things tend to go off for no apparent reason or because some juvenile decided to pull the alarm for fun. After too many minutes went by without it being shut off, I started to worry and opened our door to the hall to peek out. Smoke! Lots and lots of smoke! My significant other and I promptly went down the three flights of stairs and outside to where everyone else was. I seriously considered taking our cat with us but I was persuaded to keep her inside and that everything would be fine (although we didn’t truly know). As we passed one of our neighbor’s doors, we noticed it was slightly open and discovered that it was the source of all the smoke. We stood outside chattering with other residents as four township firetrucks pulled up to assess the situation. In they went and out they came a bit later with our neighbor, in a state of much confusion and/or drunkenness, wearing nothing but tighty whiteys and a dull look in his eyes. I don’t think he had a clue as to what was happening – we later found out that he fell asleep with items burning on the stove. Class-act neighbor right there.

I could go on and on with other stories such as the children who shot BB guns outside at each other (and put dents in cars in the process) or the time I came home from work to find helicopters swirling overhead and police cars and ambulances staked out all over the place (there had been a shooting in the apartment building next door). Or, amusing stories about our male neighbor who enjoyed blasting his Britney Spears techno music with the lights off except for his rotating party lights ball. Or the fact that we had another neighbor truly named Chuck Norris who drove a jaguar.

We had five years worth of interesting apartment living I must say. I look back and laugh now but also thank my lucky stars that we were able to get out before anything else happened. We are very thankful for the home we now own thirty miles north of Philadelphia. Home owning is a whole other bag of stories but I’ll save that for some other time. For those of you currently living in apartments or other community-based living arrangements, hopefully you’ve had better luck than we have. If you’re holding out to make an eventual house purchase – good luck, you will get there! And remember, sleep tight my friends … and don’t let those bedbugs bite!