I have just officially moved out of my parents home into my first apartment. I now live with some friends in NYC. It occurred to me that I am not the first person to do ever do this, so I turn to the good Dopers of the world to share their own experiences! I’m looking for amusing anecdotes, horror stories, advice, sentiment, and pretty much anything else.
I’ll go first. Within the very first week of being here, I managed to lose our mailbox key. See, one of my roommates asked me to check the mail for bills, but I only remembered to do it when I was running late for an appointment. Here’s the stupid part: I thought she was going to be there that evening, so I hid the mail and the mailbox key in the lobby. I know, I’m an idiot. Turns out none of the roommates were there that night, and of course, a mysterious mail thief now has our old mailbox key and a whole bunch of junk mail. Luckily none of our bills had come yet.
I moved into a new apartment in Henrietta [Rochester] NY, just in time for a bad snow storm. At the time [very early 1980s] RIT was showing movies on weekends, typcially one Friday evening, one Saturday and I can’t remember if they also showed one on Sundays as well or not. So Friday i am at school with a few friends, and the snow keeps getting worse and worse, so I stay in their dorm room and we go watch the movie. The school decides to show The Shining in addition to the original movie because so many people are stuck there. The next day I manage to drive back to the apartment I just moved to without the cops stopping me [there was a ban on unnecessary driving on.]
Now here I am in an apartment I have never slept in, which is now empty [the new roomie has decided to stay the weekend with her boyfriend.] The area is blanketed with snow, which makes the world silent, there is no traffic noise at all because there is a driving ban on again … and it is now very dark and late at night. The last movie I saw was a horror movie … and there are noises :eek:
What it actually was - obviously the next morning - the apartments in the building were mirror images of each other, there were 4 flats on each floor, in pairs with a central hall and stairway, and 3 levels - semi basement, the middle floor and the top floor. We were the middle flat. Ha, Rustic Village, we lived in Plan E … 
The flat next to ours had the hallway butted to ours, the flats on the floors above and below were just like ours. What I was hearing were the usual building moans and creaks and wheezes, and people walking in their flats. It was just the absolute silence of storm night that was making stuff sound absolutely eerie.
I remember one night, when I was living with a friend from grad school in Chicago - I was waiting for her to come home so we could go meet up with some friends. Suddenly she saunters into the apartment with two sketchy looking characters I’ve never seen before.
“Hey, HazelNut,” she says cheerfully. “This is Tom and Jerry. I just bought some weed off of Tom and invited him to come smoke some with me. Jerry’s his cousin.”
My jaw dropped. We were two unprotected females living in a less than ideal area of the city, and she decided to BRING HOME DRUG DEALERS? While I sat frozen on the couch, Tom and Roommate lit up while Jerry hides himself in my bathroom and smokes some crack (or at least, I strongly suspect he did).
After they left, I protested to Roommate. “You can’t just bring people home like that!”
“They had nice eyes,” she replied dreamily.
The next morning she greeted me with “Hey have you seen my pot?”
“Uh, no.”
“I left it on the table here. . .” she trails off as we both focus on her cat, who is lying on its back with telltale traces of stuff on its whiskers.
“Wonderful,” I said sarcastically. “We risked our lives last night so your cat could get high. I hope you’re satisfied.”
Is this your first time living in NYC, or did you grow up there, and this is your first time living on your own?
**Hello Again,**I’ve spent the last few years living in dorms, in NYC and elsewhere. That makes both of your questions complicated. I’ve lived apart from my parents, and even did a lot of my own cooking the year I had a kitchen, but this is the first time I don’t also have a cafeteria to rely on. I’ve never had to pay rent or deal with a superintendent. I grew up in New Jersey, but coming in to go to shows or meet friends is obviously quite different from living here.