Because we just can't do anything the normal way.

There are lots of quirks to living in an apartment. One of the most classic of these is having disruptive neighbors. Plenty of people have resorted to banging on the ceiling with a broomstick to get their above-neighbors to stop stomping around. We actually witnessed this in our neighbors' apartment today when we went Visiting Teaching. We of course, don't have this problem. That would be much too mainstream. We did, however, go to visit our upstairs neighbors today.

Another trial of apartment living is lots of things that only sort of work. One example of this is the ceiling light in Sara and my bedroom. There are three light bulbs in it, and the number of lights that actually work tend to rotate. At first we thought it was just random, but finally, we figured out the pattern. Our light bulbs tended to flicker on when our upstairs neighbors walk right above it. We can actually hear the footsteps, immediately followed by magically more light.

Usually, this isn't much of a problem, and we tend to have at least two of the light bulbs shining, making the lighting level fairly tolerable. However. today, we had been going on twenty-four hours with only one working light, and it was getting depressing. So, finally, we decided to take matters into our own hands.

Not half an hour after witnessing our regular neighbors' struggle with their overly loud upstairs neighbors, we set out on our quest. Despite having no idea who it was that lived above us, we located their apartment, knocked on the door, and asked if they would do us a really weird favor. Their first assumption was that we were going to ask them to stop walking on the floor above our room, but that wasn't it at all. To looks of increasing astonishment, we explained our situation, and asked that they please stomp really hard on the floor above our ceiling light. They seemed skeptical of this plan, but we quickly called Katie and asked her to report our progress. Just as they began to believe that this couldn't possibly work, Katie announced a flicker. "HARDER!" we admonished. Soon there was more than one girl literally jumping up and down on the floor just above our bedroom. Katie began to be alarmed by the noise. But finally, to our relief, another light bulb flicked on. We shouted out our victory, graciously thanked our still slightly bewildered neighbors, and continued on our way. They did, however, tell us to let them know if we ever had problems again.

I'm pretty sure there's a lesson in here somewhere. Maybe it's "Know Your Neighbor" or maybe it's "Your life will be funnier if you ask your neighbors to be more disruptive than they currently are." Or maybe it's "Take a closer look into the apartment appliances before you sign a contract." You be the judge.