During the summer before my sophomore year in high school, I went with a friend and her parents on a camping trip to Wisconsin Dells. We stayed at this one campground and most of the time, we had fun. However, there was this creepy guy who followed my friend and I around who we dubbed Tweeker. He wasn’t ugly, but his face looked sort of tweeked in or something and that’s how he got his name. He stopped by the camp one night toting a rifle telling us that if we heard any shots, he was going after a raccoon who was allegedly getting into the garbage. He seriously freaked my friend and I out and we spent a lot of time hiding from him.
Most of the other nicknames I’ve used are for old neighbors I’ve had:
**Thumper **& Aquaman - This couple did things in their apartment that got my imagination going. Our apartments shared a wall at the kitchen/dining areas. For a while, I thought maybe they were embalming bodies and building coffins on the other side of the wall. Aquaman was named for their penchant for running the water in the kitchen for what seemed liked HOURS. Thumper did an awful lot of banging on things in either the kitchen or dining area.
OCD Boy - This guy moved in not long after Thumper & Aquaman moved out and he drove me insane. One extremely hot summer day, he ran back and forth from his front door to his bathroom for several hours. The thumping was beyond irritating. I tried knocking on the door to tell him to cool it, but he wouldn’t answer. Then, he got into the habit when he was in the shower to pull the water handle on so hard the water would WHOOSH out loudly, then he’d SLAM the handle back so the pipes would “THUNK”. I was awakened at 6:15 EVERY MORNING to SHHHHHHT THUNK 12 times in repetition. That’s where the OCD thing came in…
White Trailer Trash - This woman lived across the hall and had three young children – all from different fathers. The youngest one was still in diapers. She didn’t do a damn thing to control her bratty kids and they would jump around so much and so hard, stuff on my shelves would fall off! The lady who lived under her had stuff falling on her head from them. Not long before she was evicted (a very happy time after she moved), we heard she was pregnant AGAIN with yet some other guy’s kid. I’m almost positive her boyfriend was behind my car being stolen back in 2003.
Creepy Polish Dude - Due to a downturn in my life, I ended up living in a dive motel for two years. For a little under a year (before I moved to a new apt) I had this creepy polish guy who lived next to me. He was always dirty and drunk. He hit on every woman at the motel. He really thought he was a ladies man. The guy was at least in his 60’s and just grossed everyone out. He was loud and annoying and I hated it when he was “home”.
Clompy - When I moved to the apartment I had after the motel, I had to take what I could that I could afford and in a hurry (you tend to do that when someone threatens to turn you into “ground beef”) and I had no real idea how horrible that complex was. A (now ex) friend lived there and things seemed OK in her buildings, so I figured things would be OK. I was SO wrong! I could hear things in the 5 other apartments around me! Clompy was my upstairs neighbor who couldn’t walk softly to save his life. This annoying jackass would literally clomp around everywhere in the apartment and drove me to distraction (this when he wasn’t playing the same song over and over for several hours. I will never like the song Lake Shore Drive again). It was like he wore Frankenstein shoes or something! He’d clomp around in his kitchen (which was right over my living room) for four hours at a time without stopping. It was a horrible place to live. There was no peace to be had and I’m so glad not to be living there any more!
I’ve been in my current apt for a year now and until last month had nice, quiet neighbors. A salve to my frayed nerves, to be sure. However, in the middle of last month, I acquired a new neighbor who doesn’t quite have a nickname yet. It is supposed to be a single guy who has a baby that is supposed to visit on the weekends. However, that’s not the case. I’m pretty sure his girlfriend’s living there, too. The last two sets of tenants who lived across the hall I could *never *hear – and one of them had a 3-4 year old! These people have not only played their TV and music too loudly, but they have to have loud conversations in the hall and constantly have people over. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that they don’t answer their door so I have to hear knocking for a good 10 minutes before the friends either give up, or they open the door. They tend to stomp around at 11pm, when I’m trying to go to sleep. Or, they have arguments where it sounds like someone falling down the stairs or something being thrown against the walls or floors.