This is the true story of six seniors, picked by Quinnipiac University to live in two apartments in East Haven’s Stony Brook Village.
The following is an account of what happens when you mix rambunctious college students with the real world, well actually, East Haven.
In one day, seven cop cars, including a K-9 unit, two ambulances, and a fire truck, visited our building. And, for the record, we had nothing to do with any of it.
Just last week, our hot water decided to turn cold, making the first shower of the day a not so pleasant event. What we didn’t realize was that in order to have hot water, you need to have the heat for the apartment off. Odd.
The same day as our visit from the police, our apartment’s toilet lost its ability to flush. This comes one day after our nice matanience man came and fixed the same toilet after it decided to leak out the sides.
We have a heating system that only heats certain parts of the apartment, while other parts seem not to have any access to heat. 80 degrees in the master bedroom while it is only 50 in the rest of the apartment. Odd.
Our refrigerator talks to us continuously throughout the day. It growls at us all the time. Then there was the day that its door decided to open for no reason. Odd.
Then there is the lady in the scooter downstairs who is nice, but accidentally fell out of her scooter one day and cried out. No one really noticed until the fire truck came to rescue her.
The apartment has an electric stove – if that is truly the case, then how is it that one of the burners caught fire while cooking dinner?
The laundry room is always an experience. The people you meet when washing your tightie-whities make you think twice about actually washing your clothes. I thought I left behind the days when people took your clothes out of the dryer because they want to use it. Odd.
On campus, there are a limited amount of washers and dryers, making the idea of stealing the dryer acceptable.
But, here in East Haven, we have eight dryers and not all of them are in use, yet people still manage to take your clothes out of the dryer for you while yours are still soaking wet. Nice.
We live across the hall from a rather large teenager. We always know when he comes home because his running up the stairs causes the entire apartment to shake violently. Need I add the detail that this kid once sat there watching us from his kitchen – he was watching us eat dinner at the dinner room table. Odd? Yes.
Oh yes, speaking of dinner. The first week we were here, we had a nice family dinner. Minding our business, we innocently looked out the window of our dining room, to see one of our many handicapped neighbors with his hand down his pants. Really odd and really gross.
In one day, we managed to see seven dead animals in the breezeway of the apartment. Dead, not alive, but dead.
Once we saw that, we should have known we were destined to experience other strange things while living here.
Our complex of 18 buildings has power outages every other day. We were told that there never were any until “the college students” moved into the building.
I would blame it all on Route 80. To some, Route 80 needs explanation, to others, all I need to say is Route 80.
Commuting is not so bad, except when you drive to school and take the most direct way to get there, I-91, and it seems at least once a week, there is a deadly accident causing a backup on the highway.
It makes for great car conversations, if you were lucky enough to snag one of your roommates to drive in with you so you can get a one of those precious carpool spots.
This chronology of events has probably scared people away from moving off campus or coming to East Have, please keep in mind that these things have managed to happen to six people, not just one. Our apartments are nice for the price we pay for them (and the price we pay is not as cheap as our experience makes it out to be) and they make for a comfortable commuting experience. If we can live here, we can live anywhere.