Genghis Kahn

Mrs Kahn.  I'm not afraid to use her name, since I'm fairly certain that this blog will never reach her, if she is even still alive.  She was the horrible old lady living down the hall from us when we lived in Midtown, Manhattan.  Originally, we lived on the 6th floor, but things didn't work out with the landlady, so we moved to another unit on the 4th floor.  In retrospect, it's obvious to me now that my husband (boyfriend at that time) was not paying the rent and we were probably evicted.  But since I was never on the lease, this news never reached me.

So we moved to the 4th floor.  Beautiful apartment on a much quieter side of the building facing a court yard, as opposed to 6th Ave.  6th Ave offers great people watching from the 6th floor window, but it also offers a lot of traffic noise at all hours, in addition to every Sunday morning parade that involves girls wearing bandannas as tube tops and blowing whistles from 7am on. So, the change was nice.

Once our doormen and neighbors heard we were moving to the 4th floor, we started getting the chuckles and comments.  "Oh boy. Get ready for Mrs Kahn."  "HA! Good luck with Mrs Kahn!"   It seems everyone in the building knew who she was except for us.  We'd only been there a year or so, and we both worked nights and slept through most of the days. 

It didn't take long before we ran in to her though.  Her apt door was directly across the hall from the elevator, and she always kept her door open a crack so that she would know all the comings and goings on her floor.  The open door also ensured that the entire floor always smelled of pot roast and sour kraut. We'd get glares from her as we came and went. But no conflicts yet.

And then it happened.  We were coming home with our arms full of grocery bags. We stepped out of the elevator, and she came rushing at us.  "You! You live in 4J!" 
us: "yes"
kahn: "so you're the ones who've been leaving your garbage bags in the recycle room by the service elevator!"
us: "yes."
kahn: "you are NOT allowed to do that! it's disgusting!"
us: "well, we always did on the 6th floor when the bag is too big for the chute, and so does everyone else in the building. that's why the super told us it was fine. How do you know it's OUR garbage?"
kahn: "well, it's NOT ok.  I wanted to know. So I opened your garbage to check for your mail. And do you know what happened?? I stuck my hand in dog shit!!!"
me: "yeah, I've got ice cream in my bag, so I'm goin home. And I don't appreciate that language." as I tried desperately to bite my cheeks and not laugh out loud.
kahn: "well.. I don't think you're wife likes me very much."
John: "I'd say not."

And so our relationship continued with snarls and nasty looks for quite a few years.  Eventually, I guess she realized that we weren't all that evil, and were actually very decent as neighbors, once we learned the garbage rule.  She tried to smile and say hello to me a few times, but I wasn't having it.  She even asked John why I was so rude to her once.   Ah. . I miss midtown sometimes. I'm so happy she stuck her hand in my dog's shit. Miserable old woman.  More about Kahn in the future.