I had lived in my loft for less than 10 days. It was 2 a.m. in the morning the night of New Year's Eve, and I heard an elephant right above my bed. Ka-pluck. Ka-boom. Ka-zow.
Okay maybe it wasn't an elephant, but it sounded like my upstairs neighbors were moving furniture around, and banging on chairs, and making weird noises. I swear.
The floor thud was just deafening and I was trying to sleep. But, what was I to do? It was New Year's Eve. How could I ruin someone else's party? (Loosely defined, of course).
But I was tired, restless and long suffering - I had watched that ball drop again and again from Times Square and I quite simply could no longer stand the ever-smiling Ryan Seacrest without getting grumpy.
Here was my dilemma. I had no idea who my upstairs neighbors were. Not a clue. And as hard as it was, I came to the decision to put sleep over my dignity. Affability. Likability. I needed my z's.
So, I put on my pink robe, covered up my pink pajamas, and left on my pink socks, opened my door, and walked upstairs. Softly.
With every brave bone in my body, I knocked on my neighbor's door. I was so scared - what if they got angry, or scared that they heard a knock at 2 am? To my delight, these two surprised, but really smiley, nice women answered the door. Thank god.
"Uh, uh, uh, I'm Nancy, I'm your downstairs neighbor, I know it's New Year's Eve, but I can't sleep with
all the banging - you know the sounds of furniture moving and all that - and I'd just like to introduce myself, and I'm so tired, but of course, I don't want to ruin your party, and I'm so sorry."
Talk about crazy talk. Then, they both started to talk pretty much at the same time.
"Hi, we're Amy and Amanda. Oh my gosh. We even take our shoes off so we won't disturb anyone, and we're not having a party or moving furniture. We just have our friends over, Matt and Jane. And oh my gosh - we are so sorry if we disturbed you."<
"Oh my gosh," was right. I felt like an idiot. "Okay then, well so sorry to have bothered you, and oh by the way, Happy New Year." I backed up from their door, and felt like crawling down the stairs.
Back in bed, the mysterious noise had stopped.
The next morning, I felt so bad about what I had done (I'm a Pisces and CANNOT STAND CONFLICT - even though we didn't have any) I wrote them a note. "I am so sorry to have bothered you. I am sure I didn't hear anything last night. Total mistake. Let's have a drink. Your neighbor, Nancy."
And from that experience, that night, we all became really good friends. They watch my back in "the hood," and I theirs. We help each other out - in a place that often times needs help to survive.
And to this day, I still don't know what I heard, and I still don't know what brought us together.
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