They Built us a Monument and Stuck us On Top

I awoke today with a taste for Nutella. Which is good, since I actually had it handy. I was outside in the kitchen in barefeet and an old BNL concert T-shirt when what sounded like a herd of elephants stampeded outside the door. Actually, it just turned out to be an irate-looking man with red curly hair and a matching beard. My first instinct was not to open the door, or say "Who is it?", but to back away slowly from the peephole in the door, back to one of the bathrooms, and I gripped the counter and looked in the mirror and told myself, "Calm down, stupid. It's probably just the maintenance man." But if it was, my irrational imaginative self said, then why does he keep on knocking like the world's about to end in oh-point-five seconds? Maintenance men have their own set of keys, they can just let themselves in. Besides, two facts exacerbated my unwillingness to open the door:
1) Our apartment was in tip-top shape (so far) so we did not need the services of the maintenance man
2) Having lived in this complex previously, I know what the maintenance men look like, and he wasn't one of them. Unless they hired someone new over the summer just to fuck me over. But still, they don't just stand there knocking furiously, they announce their presence with something helpful like "Maintenance!" This man did not yell anything out.

So I stood in the bathroom motionless for about five minutes, and deciding that maybe this strangecurious man gave up and left, I went back to the kitchen to finally have Nutella. I was toasting bread, like in the act of putting the slices in the toaster, when the man started knocking again. I was like, Okay, buddy. Didn't you get the message? I just woke up, in fact, you may very well have woken me up for all you know, I don't want to answer the door because I don't know who you are, and I don't really want to know, and if it's that fucking urgent, like maybe they discovered a Money Tree out in Central Quad and people are plucking the 100 dollar bills before they turn brown and die, then maybe you can just come back later after I have decently showered and have had MY FUCKING NUTELLA.

Needless to say, I never found out what exactly the strangecurious man wanted, or who he even was for that matter. There was a moment when these silly thoughts raced through my head: maybe he was a drifter who wanted to see if anyone was home, because if not, he would break down the door and steal all our valuables (like the Nintendo64). That maybe this would happen while I was in the shower, a la Psycho, and I'd be helplessly groping the tiled walls, wishing they installed one of those damned Emergency Buttons there.

I suppose we all have to tell ourselves little white lies to make ourselves feel better (and not so neurotic). Today, for example. At nine-thirty-four in the morning, I was not in my apartment, freaking out about what could have just been a neighbor needing milk with his Cheerios. I was at class, doodling on the side of my notebook and humming that one goddamn song under my breath.