My College Apartment

My college apartment had a unique feature that separated it from most other bachelor pads. New forms of life were slowly taking over the apartment, but I skipped ahead to the end of the story. To start at the beginning, my roommate Schwartz and I rented an apartment in Toronto almost ten years ago now. We had both decided to come back from Israel and go to college back in the old country, Canada. We had a small three bedroom apartment in the middle of the city, which in most ways was unremarkable. There were the small quirks of living in any building, but generally it was a nice quiet place to live.

The owner of the building, an old woman, also owned the laundry machines. The laundry room was located right across from our front door. We often “forgot” our laundry in the dryer, and the friendly superintendent, with teenagers of her own, folded our laundry with a smile. I tried not to take advantage of her kindness, but she really wanted to help us, and we had no idea how to survive on our own, so we happily accepted. Easy access to laundry facilities is one of the perks living in the half basement, we still had windows, but about half our walls were underground. It actually came in handy on occasion when we forgot our keys and had to break into our own place.

The laundry/owner lady had an obsession with quarters. We had made a sport out of getting our endless rolls of quarters for the laundry. From the bank to the 7/11, they knew us well and usually saw us coming. When you come in every day and buy the cheapest item in the store with a $20 bill and ask for change in quarters, they tend to catch on quick. Back to the owner, I don’t know what she did with all those quarters, or why she refused to sell them back to us, but I am sure there was a good reason. She was always lugging away sacks of our scrounged up quarters. Perhaps like Scrooge McDuck, she enjoyed swimming in pools of coins in her massive vault. It’s a mystery, but I guess we’ll never know. In the apartment, we often had guests over, as I liked to cook, they liked to eat and everyone watched hockey or football, depending on the season. As these types of gatherings call for, someone inevitably brought beer.

Now in those days, we thought being fancy and sophisticated meant putting a slice of lemon or lime in the bottle. I think we used a few groves of lemons in that apartment. Thinking back, I imagine it was because I had a thing for Corona beer early on, probably because it was so expensive in Israel I could never afford it. Once we were in Toronto and I had sampled the multitude of Canadian alcoholic options, we applied the lemon rule to just about anything. Once the drinks were drunk, and so too were our guests, the lemon wedge was dropped in the bottle and set on our massive window ledges arranged all over the apartment. Within a few months, hundreds of bottles were neatly arranged around the windows in rows. Day after day, the sun beat down on those beer soaked lemon wedges, week after week, and month after month. One day, the lemons decided they had enough. It seems that’s it’s a cruel way to end your life, growing up in a sunny grove in Florida, only to be stuck at the bottom of a beer bottle. I guess that’s when they decided to get even and started forming bacteria in the bottles. The apartment smelled horrendous, and slowly but surely new forms of life started slowing making their way out of the bottles. I use the term “new life form” because unlike the regular types of mold and bacteria any university student can easily recognize, these molds were unique. The memory of the smell, colours, texture and shapes still to this day make me want to slap on a pair of rubber gloves, scrub something and jump in the shower.

While the bottle revolution was slowly forming on the window ledges, the battle of the sink was in its early stages of development. It seems that much like lemon wedges, dishes and food dumped in the sink with some water shpritzied on them, don’t stay happy long either. It soon came to pass that both of us would just dart into the kitchen, grab something from the fridge, and try not to look at the sink, gagging all the while. I think we had the policy of not looking at the sink as not to anger it, after a few days it was very, very angry. Tall, strange, foamy bacteria had started forming, and it threatened to take over the kitchen entirely. I don’t know what could have happened if not for the intervention of our friend Itimar. One day he came over to the apartment, put on some gloves, and started spraying soap and water at the sink. I don’t think the sink liked that much and started to fight back. This type of combat is not for the faint of heart or the weak stomached, I went to go lie down on the couch and tried not to gag. I don’t know what happened next, but ten minutes later he emerged from the kitchen and had clearly won the battle. From that day on, we tried to keep the kitchen as clean as possible, I had a feeling that Brutus the Bacteria was lurking, just waiting for him chance to come back and take us out once and for all. Suffice it to say, the bottles were gone the next day, and the only life forms left in the apartment were the two of us.

There are too many stories and adventures I have had with Schwartz to write them all down or ever remember them, this is another one that I won’t forget.

There was that time I put a knife though my hand, in one side and out the other while making hamburgers. The burgers were frozen and slippery and all stuck together. I placed them in the palm of my hand and tried to pry them apart with a serrated steak knife. In retrospect, it may not have been the most brilliant idea, but then again most ideas seem stupid post fact. In any case, I put the knife right through my hand and shpritized blood all over the open freezer, the ceiling, the cupboards, and the floor. I am still to this day appreciative of the guys wiping it all up while I was in the hospital. I know it wasn’t easy for them and had planned on doing it myself when I got back. I really wasn’t thinking when I pulled the knife out, it was an instinctive reaction. I grabbed a couple new dish towels, applied pressure, elevated the hand, and walked into the living room where Schwartz and a couple guests were watching the hockey game. I think it was an important game because they were both glued to the TV. I was completely calm and asked, I think it was Yona, to call an ambulance. Schwartz said, “can’t this wait until after the game?” After the told him it could not wait and it was an emergency, they got up and took a look at the kitchen. I don’t mind the sight of blood, but considering as the kitchen looked like it had been the set for a slasher movie, they were freaked out. There was a huge snow storm outside, and it took the ambulance a while to get to us. In fact, a couple days later, they ended up using ambulance APC’s from the Canadian Army, some areas were so snowed in they were impassable. The next thing I did while waiting was of course to call my Dad in Israel and ask what to do. Since it was 3am and he was sleeping, I apologized for calling so late and asked Doctor Dad what to do. He told me to head straight for the hospital and get sewn up. It was practical advice.

When we had waited for ten minutes and were sure the ambulance was due at any moment, we went out in the snow and waited at the curb. Within minutes a police car drove up, two officers got out and started asking us questions. I think I should have been clearer when I said to the guys they should call 911. Apparently if you call and say “come quick, someone’s been stabbed”, they tend to misinterpret the information. After reassuring them I did it to myself, and yes, I was actually stupid enough to cut frozen hamburgers while holding them in my hand, the ambulance rolled up behind the police car. They told me that they could not take me because of the storm, since my injury was not that critical, but I should get to the emergency room right away because losing lots of blood could be fatal. I love it how everyone gets pleasure out of stating the obvious. Fortunately, Schwartz’s cousin Elana had recently gotten her drivers license, and she rushed me over to the hospital. Everything ended up well, and I have a scar on either side of my hand to remind me to defrost first in the microwave.