Crash Bing Bam Boom!

That’s the noise I heard outside my door shortly after returning from this morning’s workout.

I opened the door to check not because I was being nosey, but because I was concerned next door neighbor had finally fallen down the stairs. And I say finally because it’s been a long-standing fear of mine that her habit of, instead of parking her grocery cart at the bottom of the stairs, taking her packages out, walking them up the stairs into her unit, she takes the shortcut of walking backwards, dragging the loaded cart thumpity bump bump up the stairs.

I’ve described the process in previous posts as an accident waiting to happen.

Thankfully, it wasn’t she falling backwards or down the stairs but she, preparing to head out, dropping the empty cart down the stairs.

Even though my door faces hers, we don’t see each other very often, so she stopped to ask what I’ve been doing with myself. I asked how she was and then I thought to ask her thoughts on the lease increasing $49 a month.

“That doesn’t include us Section 8’s. They know better than to mess with the government”.

Color me surprised. Not because there are Section 8 residents in the complex ─ I knew that. Corporate gets a huge tax break for reserving a certain number of units for folks referred to them by the County under Section 8. 

No ... color me surprised because I had no idea SHE is a Section 8 tenant. Especially after all the hoopla, when she moved in January of 2015, about the high place she came from, what she’s accustomed to, and how depressing and demoralized she was here because we’re just simple folks, having simple activities, rather than the glitz and glamour she enjoyed as first, a military officer’s wife, travelling the world, having servants and, after leaving her husband, a career as a State Commissioner of Education.

To use her words back then, it was all “I can’t live like this”.

It took years for her to get over being depressed, demoralized, and settle in. She seems happy enough now, but she still doesn’t pop into the Community Room or involve herself in any of our activities. That is except for that one time she came out of her funk and made an attempt to assimilate. 

Long-time readers will recall she saw an opportunity to regain her former glory of being large and in charge by volunteering to take over duties as President of the Volunteer Activity Committee. But because she treated everyone else on the Committee as servants, ordered them around, she quickly riled folks and got herself impeached.

At any rate, the fact that she went through all that looking down her nose at us, while being a government-assisted resident, was a surprise.

The fact she’s now not hiding that fact is a sign of growth, but not only am I not nosey, I’m also not a busy body, so I’ll not be mentioning it to anyone else. That’s neighbor’s business.

While we’re on the subject of rent increases ... Trainer lives about 4 miles away. His rent went up $100 a month, and he doesn’t have a Starbucks on the corner.