It was June, and good friends presented us (a BFF and me) with an incredible opportunity to sublet their apartment for the summer. Judy and I both lived at home while attending the local university, so this was an exciting chance to live on our own for the first time, while helping out friends- a win-win. The apartment was perfect, the old crotchety landlady not so much, but I digress; we lived on the top floor of her house. I was working the 6 am shift at a hospital within easy biking distance and the apartment was on the bus line so my roommate had an easy commute to her job. Life was good, we were great tenants (no loud parties, no drunken orgies, though we did host a Bible study regularly), we were very compatible roomies and enjoyed the same activities with the same group of friends…plus, bonus, Judy was a great cook. Other than the time our window fell out and almost hit our landlady in the flower bed two stories below, we had no issues with the rental arrangement. What could go wrong?
The summer passed by quickly, as all summers sadly do. For my daily peddle to work, I dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt because early mornings during northern Minnesota summers are cold. Oh, did I mention that at the time I had long, thick, beautiful (if I do say so myself) hair? Is this a random fact, yes; significant detail, absolutely! Uneventful routine until one morning when our landlady apparently couldn’t sleep, got out of bed, and looked out the window to see me going to work at 5:30. Old Lady Holt, as we fondly called her, obviously had all day to process what she had seen, to think about the debauchery and wanton sex(full disclosure: absolutely no sex had taken place all summer) that was happening under her roof, because when we got home from work she called, screaming at us about the “long-haired hippie man” that was spending nights and leaving early in the morning. No amount of explaining that I was the “long-haired hippie man” she’d observed convinced her, and she demanded we vacant the apartment immediately.
My Dad and Judy’s Mom mobilized and arrived to pack up our belongings and remove us from Old Lady Holt’s toxic presence. Judy’s Mom got an earful about what kind of an immoral daughter she had raised and Judy’s Mom, in turn, responded with appropriately choice words, shouting louder than I’d ever heard from her (actually, a full-blown catfight would have been a satisfying end to the experience, with the certain outcome:
Momma Bear 1, landlady 0). For me, I was certain that my previously untarnished reputation had been ruined, though my Dad and brother thought the entire situation was incredibly funny and not the end of my world or reputation; my brother called me “his sister the whore” after this (my family shared a weird sense of humor). It was a misunderstanding, euphemistically speaking, caused by poor eyesight, a dirty mind, stereotypes, dementia …or God, who just needed a little laugh that day?
— cmshingle
The summer passed by quickly, as all summers sadly do. For my daily peddle to work, I dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt because early mornings during northern Minnesota summers are cold. Oh, did I mention that at the time I had long, thick, beautiful (if I do say so myself) hair? Is this a random fact, yes; significant detail, absolutely! Uneventful routine until one morning when our landlady apparently couldn’t sleep, got out of bed, and looked out the window to see me going to work at 5:30. Old Lady Holt, as we fondly called her, obviously had all day to process what she had seen, to think about the debauchery and wanton sex(full disclosure: absolutely no sex had taken place all summer) that was happening under her roof, because when we got home from work she called, screaming at us about the “long-haired hippie man” that was spending nights and leaving early in the morning. No amount of explaining that I was the “long-haired hippie man” she’d observed convinced her, and she demanded we vacant the apartment immediately.
My Dad and Judy’s Mom mobilized and arrived to pack up our belongings and remove us from Old Lady Holt’s toxic presence. Judy’s Mom got an earful about what kind of an immoral daughter she had raised and Judy’s Mom, in turn, responded with appropriately choice words, shouting louder than I’d ever heard from her (actually, a full-blown catfight would have been a satisfying end to the experience, with the certain outcome:
Momma Bear 1, landlady 0). For me, I was certain that my previously untarnished reputation had been ruined, though my Dad and brother thought the entire situation was incredibly funny and not the end of my world or reputation; my brother called me “his sister the whore” after this (my family shared a weird sense of humor). It was a misunderstanding, euphemistically speaking, caused by poor eyesight, a dirty mind, stereotypes, dementia …or God, who just needed a little laugh that day?
— cmshingle
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