Our First Apartment

I moved into our first apartment in Taylorsville a week before we got married. Kyle moved in after the honeymoon. It was a furnished apartment with old school tables, beds and sofas you couldn't find ANYWHERE nowadays because they were so unique. The center of our kitchen table was made of a large barrell and the chairs were black, heavy chairs with silver buttons and lots of cushion. There were pictures of literal rotten vegetables hung on the wall with care and the infamous brown and orange shaggy carpet that went up the walls where baseboard would normally be. The bed in the room was as old as the barrell table. If you sat on the side of the bed, you ended up on the floor because the bed was so worn that it didn't have any firmness to it anymore-slightly disturbing. So we put on a mattress cover and new clean sheets and called it good. The older single man who owned the house was as interesting as the framed pictures of rotten fruit. He was an onry old man who never smiled and told us when he found out we were engaged that "more than 50% of marriages fail. You two know that, don't you.." He wouldn't allow kids in the apartment so when my nieces and nephews came over, I'd have to tell them to be quiet. He wouldn't allow animals of any kind and freaked out one day when he swore he heard a dog. There was a seperate entrance in the back, which was nice. He yelled at us for backing into the driveway becuase he was afraid we'd back onto the lawn and crush his sprinklers. The towel rod in the bathroom wasn't hung right so we couldn't even hang a towel on it because it would fall. The toilet ran all night unless we jiggled the handle. A few times, we suspected that Bob (the owner) had entered our premises, so the next day we put a toothpick on the top of the door seperating his space and ours. If the toothpick was on the ground when we got home, we'd know he had come into our apartment. Unfortunately, we never caught him after we came up with our genius security system idea. He would come knock on our door every once in a while to "check" the washer or dryer or something. We knew he was just worried about his apartment being in one piece without children or pets. He did yell at us once for leaving brownie crums on the kitchen counter (which we had just barely eaten and I hadn't wiped up yet) becuase he was terrified of mice and didn't want the crums to attract the rodents. On Sundays, I would lead the way to go sit by Bob at church just to see the look on Kyle's face. He would get so mad. Neither of us were fond of him, but I tried to be nice because he was obviously a lonely bitter man. We had a 1 year contract, but cut it short when Kyle's dad's condo became available after 9 months. Months later: we received a package in the mail with the return address from Bob. There was no note with the package. Kyle opened the box that was wrapped like a gift in a nice box- and lo and behold! The kind man had returned items that had been left behind: 1 underwear bottom, 1 dime, and a condom. Thank heavens he returned those things! What would we do without them?!