A MOST UNCOMFORTABLE REALITY

By Edwin Cooney

“Some days are diamonds and some days are stone,” sang the late John Denver on a single 45 rpm record back about 1981. Such was the case for me last Tuesday night.

It was bad enough that my candidate for president Barack Obama lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in Rhode Island, Ohio, and Texas, but that wasn’t it. It happened in my very own apartment. I’ll explain.

I’ve lived in this old Victorian apartment house in Alameda, California since November 1996. For the most part, I’m comfortable here. The rent is downright cheap by any standard in the Bay Area or elsewhere for that matter and I’m close to most of the places I like to go.

I don’t know my neighbors very well, nor do they really know me. The couple I know the best, although we’re by no means close, live in the apartment just below me. Such has been the arrangement since about 2000.

My housekeeping style might be labeled “lazy bachelor.” The apartment is cluttered and could use a mop and vacuum cleaner much more often than I use them. Let’s face it, I’m a lazy housekeeper. However, that’s not the problem.

I’m careful with the stove and I try to make sure that the lights are off since I don’t use them much. I’m a pipe smoker and I’m careful about it. My quirk is my kitchen sink.

Because the house is old, the water pressure in the sink is exceedingly low and hence slow, especially the hot water.

On numerous occasions over the years, I’ve flooded the sink because I won’t stand and watch the sink as it fills. When the sink floods, water seeps down through the floor and, if it’s left on long enough, it goes through the ceiling of the apartment below and into the downstairs couple’s kitchen. When that happens my downstairs neighbors are unhappy—to say the least.

Once, back in March of 2004, I turned the sink on while otherwise occupied and then, to make matters worse, I forgot the water was running and left the apartment to join a friend for lunch. When we returned about an hour and a half later, my landlord was in my apartment doing his best to rectify the situation.

About six months after that, during the 2004 presidential campaign, I got too occupied listening to a documentary on the political lives of Kerry and Bush and again the water ran over.

The result was that my landlord had a special dish container on legs made for me which is inserted into the sink. It’s large enough to hold most of my dishes and, because it’s on legs, the water will go down the drain if I leave the plug out of the sink. Hence, I’ve had no problem since October of 2004…until last Tuesday night.

I use the dish container most of the time, but occasionally because I’m washing something that’s bigger than the dish container, I’ll go back to the old method. I shouldn’t, but I do. Some part of me insists that I have sufficient presence of mind to be aware of the amount of time that has passed between the time I turn on the water and the time it is sufficiently filled so that I can go to work. Well, apparently, I don’t. It’s happened again and my neighbors are very unhappy. As for my landlord, he’s not happy, but he likes me and he’s patient.

I don’t know about you, but even though I often get impatient with other people’s “quirks” or idiosyncrasies, I tend to forgive my own quite readily.

The truth is that I am just plain in the wrong sometimes. No, that’s putting it mildly. I’m just plain self-indulging and thoughtless on occasion.

As for the couple downstairs, not only are we not really close, I suspect they’d quite like me to move. True, it hadn’t happened in nearly four years, but that’s no defense. Thus I must suffer my neighbor’s wrath and the lesser frustration of my landlord. The fact that the overflow was very slight and was noticed only because my neighbor heard the water dripping before things got out of hand is just plain luck. Nor can I blame it on either Barack or Hillary.

One of the earliest lessons most of us are taught is the importance of being right. Even before we go to school, we’re rewarded when we’re right and punished when we’re wrong. There are, of course, times when we’re wrong because we’ve been fed wrong information. Occasionally, there are physical or emotional reasons to justify our wrongful status. However, sometimes we’re just simply in the wrong. We’ve blown it and the only open path to redemption is the tolerance of others.

I know that there exists in this world all kinds of guilt: criminal guilt, parental guilt, spousal guilt, societal guilt, calculated guilt, absent-minded or careless guilt, and spiritual guilt — all of which are reprehensible — especially when they’re repeated.

However, the worst kind of guilt I know of is my own.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY