My Past Life

Yup. I used to have it pretty good. Free rent. Free cable. A decent salary for a young starting-out family. Lived by a pool. Worked from home. It was the good life, indeed.

Except... I was a slumlord.

• 93 units of low income housing.
• Mustard yellow facade. Avocado green stoves.
• Roaches that would rain down from the door jams when you inevitably had to kick in the doors for evictions.
• Gunshots and sirens in the neighborhood almost every night.
• Taggers marking their territory.
• Having to call CPS on families neglecting and/or abusing their kids.
• Kicking out drug dealers, pimps and hos... some who proudly sharpen their machetes on the front porch on the night you deliver the eviction notice.
• Helping a tenant fax their release of liability to the Jerry Springer show, on which they are proudly scheduled to appear the following week.
• Car getting keyed and all tires slashed the night before Christmas Eve.
• Gang-bangers screaming in your face while your toddler looks on from his stroller... Screaming back at said gang-banger for getting in your grill in front of your baby... Gang-banger stomping away.
• Pregnant and climbing into an overflowing dumpster to stomp down the brimming trash in order to keep it from spilling into the parking lot.
• Picking up used condoms off the playground.
• Calling the cops on the crazy old lady threatening to kill herself.
• Chasing nasty people out of the pool "doing it" in broad daylight.
• Getting sued because your black security guard quitting decided it would be a nice opportunity to cash in on a bogus civil rights claim.
• Wading through 30 years of little-old-lady pack rat memorabilia when her water heater floods her apartment.
• Disciplining tenants who have moved in from Africa for fire-eating on the tennis courts (I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried).
• Trying to convince the tenant who lives above the pool that he should not throw bologna in the water to chase away the "evil spirits."
• Coming home from the hospital with your newborn baby and having somebody walk up to you as you gimp out of the car just to inform you that their toilet needs fixing... RIGHT NOW!!!
• 20 year olds telling you that they have "perfect credit" only to find that they had already amassed 34 collection accounts in the two years that they've been allowed to own credit cards.
• Having the FBI rifle through your tenant files after 9/11 because they suspect a sleeper cell is living in your complex.
• Cleaning out human waste from people's bathtubs because the sewage line has backed up into three buildings.
• Telling the two sets of missionaries living in a top floor apartment above the parking lot that it is NOT okay to hurl flatware at passing vehicles.
• Shutting down birthday parties for toddlers because their parents' guests have become drunk and disorderly.
• Catching your security guard and your assistant having an adulterous affair while they are supposed to be on duty.
• Laying out Easter Eggs for a hunt that is to transpire the next morning, only to find that the raccoons have opened all the eggs and eaten the candy inside before sunrise.
• Dragging an 8 year old kid back to his dad's apartment because he was caught "huffing" aerosol cans in the parking lot.
• Convincing an AIDS patient that it was NOT okay to sell his medical marijuana to his neighbors.
• Cleaning out a transvestite's closet who had left town without leaving notice, but neglected to pack his fake boobies and size 14 stiletto heals.
• Opening doors for locked out tenants at 4:00 in the morning.
• Kicking out your neighbors upstairs, which ends in a retaliatory 10-hour heavy metal guitar marathon aimed at your ceiling.

Yup. Those were the days.