The Dude

So, I finally met the neighbor across the hall, face-to-face, a couple days ago. She seems very cool. Just to give you an idea of just how cool she is, on New Year’s Eve, we just so happened to be walking up to our apartment as she was pulling into the lot, with her radio blasting “Bust A Move” by Young M.C.  Oh yeaaahh! I was immediately intrigued, as that is one song that pumps me up; always has, probably always will. J Heck, I’ll probably be an 85-year-old granny performing karaoke to it at my grandson’s wedding reception or something. Ah, life aspirations… J

At any rate, a couple days ago, I was outside, enjoying the weather and reading some articles on my phone, when she came home and got her dog out of her apartment to take him downstairs to do his business. Her dog ran right up to me so I was petting him while we struck up your typical boring first-conversation small-talk. We got the basics out of the way: name, workplace, amount of time living in the complex, and of course the fact that her dog’s name is The Dude. (Which made her even cooler, that she named her dog after a term I gleefully overuse, not to mention after a character in one heck of a movie: The Big Lebowski!) Oh, and in that small-talk convo, I told her that I’d found a key on the ground in the corridor, not long before our encounter, and asked if it might be hers. (I didn’t do any deep investigation where I tried it out on any of the other doors that share our corridor, as I thought that would be slightly creepy! I simply put it in a safe place and figured I’d ask the neighbors, later (as neither answered when I knocked immediately after discovering the key).

Last night, there was a knock on my door. I was surprised, as we don’t typically get our door rapped. Lo and behold, it was the spunky, fashionable neighbor girl who blares “Bust A Move” and named her dog “The Dude”.

“You wouldn’t happen to still have that key, would you? I think it might be mine, afterall.” I got it out and gave it to her for her to try on her storage closet. Unfortunately, it was not a match. But while she attempted the key in the lock, The Dude escaped, bee-lining straight into my apartment!

“Duuude!” she hollered. He ran around through the kitchen and around to the living room, darting this way and that, until she and I and my husband were all trying to corner the little pistol. My husband was the first to snatch him, but as he grabbed him, he shrieked, “He’s peeing!” She snatched him up, with his wang pointing straight at us, her face flush as she apologized probably ten times as she rushed toward the door, and all the while, I was cracking up, telling her it’s all good.

My husband was still in shock and rushed in the bathroom to wash his hands, then made his way into the kitchen to dig around for carpet cleaner, and finally removed his pee-stained t-shirt, after realizing there were urine traces there, as well! Priceless.

I guess it could have been worse: The Dude could have made a doodie!