The New Neighbors

We just met our new neighbors yesterday. They will be living upstairs from us in our condo complex. Sharing a garage with us. My husband and I are pretty much geezers living among mostly other geezers here. Okay, at 54 and 62 we're on the adolescent end of geezerhood, but still. And I'm okay with that. Our complex is only 44 units and although it's not an "over-55 community", like many of the communities down here, (down here being Florida), it just kind of turns out that way anyway.
So back to the new neighbors.

Our previous upstairs neighbor was an old woman in her eighties who was, shall we say, eccentric. She became more and more eccentric until she began threatening people with brooms and hammers and calling the police and fire departments reporting imaginary break-ins and assaults. This is not funny and I'm not making fun. She had become our friend, more or less, over the years, but we began keeping a watchful eye out for her as she started drifting back and forth between glad to see us and calling us filthy names. Then finally she "went over to the dark side" for good. They took her away and sold her condo. We heard they sold it to someone who intended to rent it out. Oh goodie. Enter "the renters", our new neighbors.

Our doorbell rings yesterday and a woman introduces herself as the owner/rental agent of the condo upstairs and just wanted to let us know that our new neighbors were moving in RIGHT NOW and would we like to meet them? Sure. I walk outside to where their furniture-laden truck is parked, and the woman points me toward a twenty-something guy, about six foot two, with gorgeous curly locks who looks like my nephew and has no shirt on. She says, "This is Aaron. He and his girlfriend Wendy are moving in upstairs." Holy cow. YOUNG PEOPLE!
This should make for some animated conversation at the next potluck in the clubhouse.
"Whose kids were those at the pool today? Ruth and George's?"
"No, they LIVE HERE!"
"WHAT?! But they're, they're YOUNG!"

So anyway, after I overcame my own shock and introduced myself and so on, I went back inside and told my husband the news. Young people were going to be living upstairs, sharing our garage. He got a sardonic look on his face and said, "This oughta go over big," thinking as I was about the rest of our neighbors. So he goes out to meet them too. By now Wendy is also outside and we chat briefly, offering any help we might be able to give. They seemed nice. Respectful. (Oh good Lord, listen to me. Respectful. That's what my grandmother would have said.) So we go back inside and soon we hear some conversation outside. See, the stairway to their unit is right outside our door in a kind of little courtyard. We can hear everything. So, it seems that Aaron and his friend Jeremiah, who is helping him, can't get the massive couch through the door and around the immediate corner. No way to make it go no matter what. They're thinking that maybe if they removed the screen from their lanai (Florida-speak for screened-in porch) at the back of the unit, they might be able to pass it up from beneath. I'm thinking good luck with that. In fact I even said it. Next thing you know, we look out our lanai door behind our condo and see Aaron and Jeremiah with the couch. In a flash, they had it on its end, and hoisted it so the top end was resting on the lanai above us. Now here's my favorite part. Aaron takes over holding the whole thing while Jeremiah runs around the building, up the stairs, and through the apartment to pull it up from the other end. We're standing in our living room looking out back at a guy HOLDING A COUCH all by himself, arms over his head like Atlas holding up the world, and his arms aren't even shaking. My husband and I looked at each other and he said what we were both thinking. "Might be good to have this guy around."

Well, that's chapter one of the new neighbors story. I don't expect there'll really be much to report. They seem like good kids. Hey, I'm kind of looking forward to being exposed to some youth for a change. Besides, in a neighborhood full of "Hanks", "Franks", "Eds", "Eleanors" and "Marguerites", it's kind of refreshing to hear names like "Wendy" and "Aaron".
Welcome to the neighborhood.