In my apartment complex's never-ending quest to annoy me to the point of madness, they have hit upon the best way to drive me from happiness to rage faster than I believed possible. Namely, the entrance gate immediately outside my building has started malfunctioning.
But wait, malfunctioning doesn't quite cover it. What's it called when you think something is maliciously not working on purpose? Sabotage.
Yes, that's it. I think the gate is actively trying to sabotage my happiness. Because sometimes it works. I push the little button on my keyring, and the gate magically slides open. This happens approximately once in every 5 attempts, just enough for me to keep trying it, even though it probably won't. To make things worse, there's no rhyme or reason to when it will open. Sometimes in the mornings, the keyring won't work, but if I get my car all the way up to the gate to leave, it will start opening. Other mornings, the keyring works from all the way at my front door (rarely). Then the next time I try it (like this morning) not only does the keyring not work, getting up right next to the gate won't trigger the opening either, and I have to drive all the way around to the main gate.
Repeat those same options for every other time of the day (coming home from work, coming home late after a movie, leaving in the afternoon to go on an ice cream run, etc.) and vary the responses completely at random, and you start to get the idea of the roulette wheel that has become my attempts to leave or enter my apartment complex. But again, the randomness seems to have a darker edge - it's more likely not to work when I'm particularly late, or in a bad mood, or generally exhausted. And the time it's most likely to not work at all? When I'm in an okay mood, but just need one more thing to push me right into an official bad mood. This gate is sentient, and it's vicious.
"Well Jason," you say. "Why not just use the main gate all the time then? Why subject yourself to torture at the hands of an evil incarnate mechanical fence when there is a reasonable alternative right there available?"
Because, blog person, the other option (the main gate) is very far away. Like, several dozen feet. And if I want to let someone into the main gate, it involves putting on shoes (and probably clothes too, since I'm pretty brief with outfits in my house, since it's 100s of degrees in Texas right now) and actually walking those feet myself, to get in keyring range of said gate. Plus, there are stairs involved! 6 of them! Alternatively, if I go to let someone into the gate by my building, the most I have to walk is the 10 feet into my living room (clothing optional).
And if I'm the one going in or out, I have to traverse the Speed Bumps of Inappropriate Size and Placement, AKA the driveway that wraps around my building. Seriously, I have never met speed bumps so poorly constructed and placed in my life. They look like they were built by 8 year-olds playing with modeling clay - little snakes across the drive that vary in height and texture. I care way too much about the underside of my beautiful car than I care to admit, but even I will allow that I'll do everything in my power to avoid ever driving over those things, up to and including throwing a little temper tantrum inside my car and scaring the kids next door.
But yeah, I'm not the only one who has this really powerful anger towards the capriciously mean gate - all my neighbors have been slowly simmering with their rage, and they're just about to boil over. Yesterday, when I got home I tried to come in the near gate, but it wouldn't open. My next door neighbor was immediately behind me in the drive coming in, and thus he had to back up directly into traffic in order for us to get to the main gate. After a very near crash with a DART bus making a questionably illegal left turn, he made it home, but upon getting out of his car he unleashed a string of obscenities that was impressive even to me, a person who conjugates new forms of the word fuck daily.
When you combine this latest problem with the lack of gas for 4 months earlier this year, the interruption of mail for 4 days last week, and the continued closure of the apartment pool due to lack of working pump, I can practically feel the rage of my neighbors seeping through the walls. Because did I already mention the heat? You don't deprive people of their only source of cool water when you can fry an egg on the concrete outside their front door. A gate that thwarts you at every turn is the last straw that may very well break our collective camel's back, to twist a metaphor beyond recognition.
I'm just waiting for the night when a mob of angry homeowners comes a'knocking, rousing me to come join them on their quest to overthrow the homeowners association president who lives at the top of the hill.
Why else would I have this pitchfork lying next to the front door?
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