Story by Elliott Kennedy
Photo courtesy of Flickr
After just a few days as a college freshman, I locked myself out of my dorm room wearing only my kitty-cat bathrobe.  During my first dinner with my French host family, I mixed up the phrases “I am full” and “I am pregnant.”  The first time I ate sushi, I almost maimed myself with a chopstick.
Nearly every new and challenging experience in my life has been accompanied by my constant companions, Uncertainty and Awkwardness. When Uncertainty takes my hand, I wish magical crystal balls actually existed. With Awkwardness by my side, I feel completely out of my element, like a bull in a china shop. It’s the same feeling I have right now, as a first-time renter.
As a teenager, I dreamed of having an apartment of my own. Whenever I visited my older sister in San Francisco, I seethed with jealousy. Modern art hung above her fireplace and framed movie posters decorated her dining room. The coffee table sagged with the weight of her collection of glossy fashion magazines. Elegant wine bottles lined the uppermost kitchen shelf, like soldiers awaiting their call to duty at the next dinner party. It was chic and grown-up, fun and free. It was my daydream, come to life.
But even after I moved out of the freshman dorms, my apartment fantasy remained a distant hope. For the next two years, I worked as a resident assistant, living in the dorms while my friends learned to live a life off campus. (Again the green monster of jealousy reared its ugly head.) When I moved to Europe for six months to study French, I was sure that my time had come to live in an apartment. And what better way to be inaugurated into the world of independent living than by having my own second-story walk-up above a patisserie? But in a cruel twist of vicious irony, the study abroad program placed me in a run-down dormitory with less security than a Toys-R-Us. It wasn’t until two months ago, on my twenty-first birthday, that I finally signed a lease and got an apartment of my own. My dream came true.
But it’s nothing like the fantasy. Every aspect of apartment living has thrown me for a loop, often leaving me feeling utterly confused. In every way, it has made me feel like a fish out of water.
I first felt this way when I finally decided to clean my apartment. I guess once you hit a certain age, shoving all your stuff under the couch doesn’t count as “clean” anymore. So, after becoming sufficiently disgusted with the lack of cleanliness in my apartment, I tackled the problem head-on, starting with the toilet. Armed with bleach cleaner and a toilet brush, I lifted the lid of the tank and halted to a stop. In the corner of the tank, clearly visible even in the murky toilet water, was Flubber’s angry cousin: an abandoned toilet gel tablet had semi-dissolved and re-congealed into a massive glob of blueness. It seemed to have attached itself to the porcelain, like one of those aliens that latches onto a host’s face. I thought about calling a HazMat team, the CDC, or even Ghost Busters. But in the end, I did what any self-respecting college senior would do: I called my mom for help.
But having my mom on speed dial couldn’t have prepared me for my strangest apartment misadventure to date. Late one night, I returned to Eugene after spending the Fourth of July weekend in Portland. Following my normal routine, I keyed into my apartment, tossed the keys on the kitchen table, and put my bag on the floor. When I turned around to close the front door, I was startled (ok, I was horrified) to see dark red liquid dripping down the inside of the door. I spun around, half-expecting to see CSI Grissom standing behind me, making a quip about blood splatter. Perplexed and on edge, I looked around my apartment for other signs that something was amiss. My flatscreen was still there, nothing was broken, the windows were still closed and locked… and then my eyes fell on a lone cork near the base of my ottoman. I picked it up and walked over to the wine rack lying horizontally atop my refrigerator. One of the bottles in the rack was open and empty. Wine was trickling down the face of my fridge, staining my homemade photo magnets. The wine bottle had somehow exploded, spewing burgundy liquid across the entire length of my apartment. After wishing I had been home to see that impromptu spectacle, all that was left to do was clean.
Toilet troubles and exploding wine bottles represent only a couple of peculiar experiences I’ve had as a new renter. My fridge actually vibrates when the generator turns on, sometimes inching it away from the wall. A family of six squirrels lives in my hedges, often chasing one another on my front porch and peering through the sliding glass door as I eat dinner. With no laundry facilities on site, I load my bike basket with dirty clothes once a week and pray that my pink polka-dot underwear doesn’t fly out on my way to the laundromat.
If it hasn’t become apparent by now, let me say this: I have no idea what I’m doing. Every day, I live by trial and error. Getting through a day without a mishap is a rarity, and I have come to expect that. I’m following a learning curve that sometimes feels too steep to climb.
And I kind of like that.
I said that the reality of apartment living didn’t match my fantasy, which still holds true. But now I believe the reality is better than the fantasy. It’s more exciting and unpredictable. My days are never boring. I have a continuous supply of goofy stories to tell my friends. (I mean, exploding wine bottles? You can’t make that stuff up.) Feeling like a fish out of water doesn’t have to be bad thing. My friend Uncertainty and I have finally come to terms, but Awkwardness and I are still on the outs. Either way, my constant companions are here to stay.