766 1/2

During medical school, we lived in a six-plex close to the Health Sciences Center campus. Most of the apartments were filled with students or those who worked in one of the many campus buildings or hospitals. The apartment building we lived in had five, two-bedroom apartments and one one-bedroom. The one bedroom apartment was directly below ours and had a strange floor plan due to the communal laundry room that took up a lot of the square footage the rest of the apartments had for kitchens and dining rooms. Perhaps for that reason, 766 1/2 attracted some strange fellows. When we first moved there, there was an angry black man who played his rap music very loudly. We had just moved from an apartment where our upstairs neighbor blared Lynard Skynard's "Freebird" every Saturday morning. Frustrated and nauseated after just returning home from work, I stomped my foot in protest and he came running upstairs to confront the person who would show such disrespect. I think having that first negative experience made us a bit wary of our downstairs neighbors. Thankfully, he and his wife and new baby moved out within 2 weeks of us arriving so there were no more confrontations.

The next occupant of 766 1/2 was a Chinese man who didn't speak any English. We hardly ever saw him but he liked to cook very, very pungent meals. I was pregnant with Seth at the time and threw up several times after catching a whiff of his latest concoction. I don't remember when he moved out but the next inhabitant was Donny (the drug dealer). Donny was a friendly chap who always had loads of cash. He enjoyed showing off his wad that he "claimed" was from tips he earned as a skyhop at the airport. He drove a Cadillac, had very nice jewelry and always had a friendly smile and a howdeedo. One day, the entire building became smoky and we determined the source to be coming from an apartment where no one answered the door. Worried about a possible fire, I called the fire department . He was very, very concerned about the fire department arriving and as soon as the fire trucks arrived, I noticed a suspicious looking, somewhat groggy, disheveled man stumble out of the building. Donny didn't stay long in 766 1/2.

Next came Suzy. Ahhhhh.......Suzy. Suzy and I were not close but I never sensed open hostility. The first week after she moved in, she displayed a real fondness for Seal, the musician, and soon had most of the words to "Crazy" memorized. It must have been what she listened to to relax because I never really heard any other album get blasted like that. But every few weeks, I'd hear that album played at full volume. "Oh we're never going to surviiiive...uuuunless....we get a little....craaazy."

Maybe the occupants of 766 1/2 had an inferiority complex. I sensed resentment for any movement by us upstairs, as if we walked with loathing upon their heads. In any case, Suzy didn't like us much and got her ultimate revenge on a hot August night.

Jay, Seth and I had just returned from an extended vacation (the kind you can only take when you're students) and had struggled with Seth at nighttime during the entire trip. We had been unable to let him cry-it-out in motel rooms and with other family members in nearby bedrooms so when we arrived home, we were determined he relearn his healthy sleep habits. Our apartment was really hot when it was hot outside. The building had cinderblock bricks for insulation and had windows facing east AND west for the full sun exposure. We had a swamp cooler that we placed in the front window during the day and moved to our bedroom at night and several other strategically placed fans in an attempt to cool down the roasting apartment.

That infamous night, we put Seth to bed and he immediately cried in protest. He had learned that mom and dad will sometimes come and get him if he cried loud and long enough. But he didn't realize that we were back home and we were no longer afraid of being annoying guests. What we didn't realize, however, is that Suzy had had enough of our tough love. We went to bed and at around 10:30 and I heard Seth start to cry again. He really needed to be retrained to sleep through the night so I ignored him and stayed in bed. To this day, I am an exceptionally light sleeper and cannot sleep through my kids crying but that day, in that sweltering environment with the buzz of fans going, being so sleep deprived from traveling, I slept through his cries. I slept all the way until I heard a loud pounding on my bedroom door yelling, "Get Up! Get Up!" "Move! Move! Move!" by men in black shining a large spot flashlight in my face and around the room. Jay and I stumbled out of bed in panic as they herded us into the living room. We were both sleeping in our garments as it was so hot but I managed to pull my robe off of the door on my way out. We entered our living room which was occupied by about eight policemen and a policewoman. Looking out our front window, I saw 3 police cars with lights flashing and heard several radios communicating with eachother. In complete shock, I saw my one-year-old son being held by a stern looking police woman who was intent on keeping him away from me. We started answering questions thrown at us as fast as we could to clear up this very unfortunate mistake. No, we didn't hear the phone ring...twice. No, we didn't hear the knocks on the door to our apartment. Our neighbor, Suzy, had called the police? Was worried about a baby who had been crying for an hour? Thought maybe the parents had left the baby alone in the apartment or were too drugged to respond? Such a caring neighbor....that Suzy.

The policewoman finally let go of Seth and he came toddling over to me. They could see that we weren't abusing him, that we just couldln't hear the phone or the door with all of the fans and reprimanded our situation that, in their view, was dangerous. We were instructed to remedy the situation...put a phone in our bedroom, etc. and we nodded and "yes sirred" with complete humility. They left and mortified, Jay and I just stared at eachother...neither believing what had just happened. Could they have taken Seth if we hadn't convinced them that we were fit parents? Could we never let Seth cry again?

A couple of days later, a social worker came to follow up and immediately assured us that we would have no record and it was obvious that this was a huge misunderstanding. She did counsel us to become more friendly with our neighbors so this sort of thing wouldn't happen again and if we were going to let our son cry (which she totally understood was sometimes necessary) to let our neighbors know that we would be doing that.

We had one more year with Suzy living below us. She never, ever talked to us about her infamous phone call, and we never confronted or apologized to her about it. I'd still hear "Crazy" from time to time and wondered if she meant it as a message to me. Maybe, somewhere, Suzy is blogging about good old apartment 766.