My Thursday Mornings

I should give some background information that I am a nut about correspondence. And this trait carries over into other aspects of my life. If someone writes me an e-mail, I am immediately compelled to write back (but if those first few minutes pass, the compulsion escapes me and that’s another story). If someone suggests we meet at a certain place or time, I have to clarify whether the suggestion was meant in earnest and when exactly said meeting will take place. Finally, if someone rings my doorbell, I have to answer.

Until recently.

So there is a courtyard in the back of our apartment building. All of the apartments have balconies looking over it and down on the ground is an outdoor patio of a restaurant. (On a guilty/disgusting pleasure note, I trim my fingernails off this balcony). In the courtyard, behind the restaurant’s patio, one can find all the large garbage and compost bins for the residents of our building.

On Thursday mornings, before 7:00 if one’s lucky, the men come to collect these bins. And they have to come through the main stairwell to get to the courtyard. But they don't have a key to the building, so they just ring the buzzers to every apartment until someone buzzes them in. They then proceed to drag the bins up and down the stairs, in and out of the building, so you can hear the "kaTHUNK kaTHUNK" in every apartment, even with all the doors closed. This is every Thursday. Even if I’m awake and getting ready for work, it still pisses me off. I’m like, someone get them a ****ing key! Their managers should get them a key. The postmen have one. The garbage men should, too. I now don’t buzz them in out of principle. This was hard for me in the beginning, as normally there would be a twitch going in my body until I'd buzzed this person, regardless of who it was, inside. But that urge is gone. That urge has turned to rage and when the bell of our apartment shrieks its morning cry, whether I'm laying in bed, making coffee in the kitchen, or brushing my teeth in the bathroom, my eyes narrow, my jaw clenches, and I remind myself that soon it will be over and it's really not a big deal. Such a 'not-big deal' that I wrote an entire blog about it.