06-25-00
One of my greater pet peeves about the place in which I live, beyond the questionable faux walnut panelling throughout, and the hideous vinyl 'celebrating the centennial' wallpaper in the bathroom, is that I have a front and a back door. Now, you may be wondering why that would annoy me. I mean, if the back of my apartment catches on fire, or an axe murderer is menacing me in the living room, I can easily escape from the kitchen entrance, and vice versa. However, the back entrance spills on to a hallway that is shared with a suite used by the local "massage parlour" [I swear I will share stories about the whores another time] and the upstairs apartment. The front door opens on to a nice wooden deck that is covered with pretty green and white furniture and flower boxes.
The bad part about the whole arrangement is that solicitors seem to be unaware that the #2 on both doors lead to the same apartment. I tend to not answer the hallway door, but on some occasion I have, which has mostly led to annoying confrontations with drunk guys looking for love, or even more creepy, the random Latter Day Saint [read: MORMON] looking to save my soul. That's all well and fine, I mean, I'm sure my soul is in desperate need of saving, but when I say I'm not interested, I don't want to get into a deep philosophical conversation about how I don't even know what they want. If you introduce yourself to me as Brother Bob or Elder Tom, and you have on a white shirt and black tie, and a pocket protector that reads "Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," the odds are that I don't want to talk to you.
And I am even less inclined to want to talk to you when you circle around to the front of my apartment and knock on that door as well. I mean, if you can't figure out that the same building is not likely to have two different apartments with the same number, then you really have deeper issues to deal with than the sorry state of my spiritual life. Honestly.
