The Vilification of Tom

Everyone needs a scapegoat....
especially when you share a house with other tenants. We have had a pretty decent relationship with our upstairs tenants. They have played the part of the calm, collected Microsoft guys, and we have played the part of the picky family downstairs who has specific temperature needs (we share heating). And we all got along quite nicely. They kept their sweatshirts on inside on so we could have it a little cooler downstairs, and the rowdiest they got was playing "Just Dance" on the weekends (and not even very late at night).

And then Tom came on the scene upstairs. His move coordinated quite nicely with Chinese New Year. And there was a party (our upstairs neighbors are Chinese). Even with all our white noise machines and vents on, we could still hear all their partying. But it was Chinese New Year. No biggie. We could handle one weekend of excitement.

But then came the Superbowl. That Sunday, they played the game so loudly that we could have followed along cleanly without ever turning on our T.V. They even brought in subwoofers (or whatever they are called) for the occasion so we could all really appreciate the game.

I admit, I was quick to blame Tom. We had no issues at all with our neighbors before he moved in. "Its Tom" I told Richard-- "he's turned those nice Microsoft gentlemen into party animals!"

Richard easily blew off my adjudgment of the situation. It was just coincidence....

and then the heating wars started. We live in a basement apartment with really good insulation and not many windows, so it warms up quickly. But in order to warm the upstairs portion of the house to a reasonable temperature, our portion of the house would sometimes get up to 80 degrees during the day....in FEBRUARY! I was having the open the doors just to be comfortable.

Again, I rationalized that it was Tom who was the evil influence. Each day I composed sticky note message after sticky note message to leave on their door, and Richard would talk me down.

well, finally Richard began to see clearly...and the vilification of Tom began. If anything bad happened around the house, we blamed it on Tom. Our cabinets became unhinged-- Tom did it. Our fence blew down after an especially bad wind storm-- it was Tom's fault. It felt good to have someone to blame for all our problems....

...until one day I heard music drifting down from upstairs. It sounded familiar and lovely, and after a few minutes I realized that someone was playing music by one of my favorite jazz vocalists-- Eva Cassidy!

It ruined everything! Suddenly Tom was not only a human being, but I had something in common with him. I could no longer mutter his name like a foul 4-letter word. I wanted to go up and hear the rest of his music collection...I wanted to get to know him...bake him cookies...see if he wanted to come down and have dinner with our family.

*sigh*

and now I have no scapegoat...but I do possibly have an interesting person to become acquainted with!

(name has been changed because I know Richard would want me to change his name)