I’m a little creeped out.
I was informed of a sweet-looking stereo sound system laying around in the trash room on my floor (of the apartment building I live in). So I went out to the trash room, admired the system, and pondered its feasibility. The trash room air was a little, well, trashy, so I stepped outside (the halls are outdoors, covered but with pretty good views to all sides) to get some fresh air while I pondered. I ended up deciding that the inconvenience of hauling around the system, which may or may not even work, would outweigh the potential benefit of taking it for several reasons I won’t go into here.
But, thought I, I don’t really feel like going back into my room. So I’ll walk around a bit.
And that I did. Well, in each corner of each floor, there’s a little cut-out area where, from the hallway you can see some very tall, very pretty bamboo-like trees. I stood and took in the air while examining and admiring these incredibly pleasant plants, revisiting old memories of my first semester of college, when some friends and I found a bunch of bamboo logs and carved them up into marijuana pipes. I thought about how I used to put on a playlist made up entirely of the Beatles and the Beastie Boys and smoke a bowl out of my homemade bamboo pipe, and how I once almost burned down a bed (maybe the house) due to a defect in my pipe’s design whereby flaming marijuana was able to leap off the side of the bowl. (We won’t go into those details, either. Suffice it to say that there wasn’t even a superficial burn on the sheets; some combination of the low flamingness of the weed that fell out, my apparently-not-too-slowed reflexes, and my ability to deeply analyze the nature of the universe saved the day.)
So as I’m admiring the plants and thinking about days gone by, a guy walks out of what seems to be an apartment door right next to me and walks right past me, muttering something about timing. I looked his way, considered saying something, and thought, “Nah. Go back to the bamboo.” (I’m probably not the only individual within fifteen miles to have had that very thought in the last 24 hours, BTW. However, I may be the only one to have had it in English.)
The guy turns around, heads back my way and says “I’m going to have to ask you to move along.” 
The guy looks completely unofficial but wears an aura reminiscent of mall security. “Excuse me?” I ask, curiously.
Dude: “Do you live here?”
Me: “Uh, yeah.”
Dude: “Do you think those people like the idea that you’re looking through their windows?”
Me: (looks back to the bamboo and realizes there are windows visible directly behind it, on my floor, one floor up and one floor below) “Er…sorry…I wasn’t looking at any windows, I was looking at these trees here.”
Dude: “Are you done?” It was not a question in the traditional ‘Where’s my car?’ sense.
Me: “Uh, yeah. I guess. I wasn’t trying to be creepy or anything…”
Dude: “Well, it is creepy. It creeps me out. And I’m a man.”
Er, OK. I walk back to my apartment, and notice that the guy unlocks and walks into another door on the way. Apparently he is official. I ponder these things at the same time:
“How sad that people have to watch out for residents looking through their windows.”
“He really thought I was looking through someone’s window.”
“Somebody might’ve called him into their apartment to watch me watch trees, thinking I was looking through their window.”
“Multiple people think I’m looking through someone’s window.”
“Good thing I’m moving out soon. Note to self: Admire bamboo somewhere else in the future.”
